ers; they had to be bought to enable one to
follow these pursuits, and were very dear; one had to possess a large
capital and be content beforehand to derive only a mediocre revenue from
it, 10, 5 and sometimes 3 % on the purchase-money.[3311] The place once
acquired, especially if an important one, involved official parade,
receptions, an open table, a large annual outlay;[3312] it often ran
the purchaser in debt; he knew that his acquisition would bring him more
consideration than crowns. On the other hand, to obtain possession of
it, he had to secure the good-will of the body of which he became a
member, or of the patron who bestowed the office. That is to say, he
must be regarded by his future colleagues as acceptable, or by the
patron as a guest, invited, and feasible friend, in other words, provide
sponsors for himself, furnish guarantees, prove that he was well-off and
well-educated, that his ways and manners qualified him for the post,
and that, in the society he was about to enter, he would not turn out
unsuitable. To maintain one's self in office at court one was obliged to
possess the tone of Versailles, quite different from that of Paris and
the provinces.[3313] To maintain one's self in a high parliamentary
position, one was expected to possess local alliances, moral authority,
the traditions and deportment handed down from father to son in the old
magistrate families, and which a mere advocate, an ordinary pleader,
could not arrive at.[3314] In short, on this staircase, each distinct
story imposed on its inmates a sort of distinct costume, more or less
costly, embroidered and gilded, I mean a sum of outward and inward
habits and connections, all obligatory and indispensable, comprising
title, particle and name: the announcement of any bourgeois name by a
lackey in the ante-chamber would be considered a discord; consequently,
one had one's self ennobled in the current coin, or assumed a noble
name gratis. Caron, son of a watchmaker, became Beaumarchais; Nicolas, a
foundling, called himself M. de Champfort; Danton, in public documents,
signed himself d'Anton; in the same way, a man without a dress-coat
hires or borrows one, no matter how, on going out to dine; all this
was tolerated and accepted as a sign of good behavior and of final
conformity with custom, as in testimony of respect for the usages of
good society.

Through this visible separation of stories, people had acquired the
habit of remaining in th