e condition in which they were placed; they were
not irritated by being obliged to stay in it; the soldier who enlisted
did not aspire to become an officer; the young officer of the lower
noblesse and of small means did not aspire to the post of colonel or
lieutenant-general; a limited perspective kept hopes and the imagination
from fruitlessly launching forth into a boundless future: ambition,
humbled to the ground at the start, walked instead of flying; it
recognized at the outset that the summits were beyond its reach; to be
able to mount upward one or two steps was enough.--In general, a man
obtained promotion on the spot, in his town, corporation or parliament.
The assistant-counselor who pleaded his first case in the court of
Grenoble or of Rennes calculated that, in twenty years, he would become
first judge at Grenoble or at Rennes, rest twenty years or more in
office, and he aimed at nothing better. Alongside of the counselor of
a (court) presidency, or of an "election" magistrate, of a clerk in the
salt-tax bureau, or in the frontier custom-house, or in the bureau of
"rivers and forests," alongside of a clerk in the treasury or ministry
of foreign affairs, or of a lawyer or prosecuting attorney, there was
always some son, son-in-law or nephew, fitted by domestic training, by
a technical apprenticeship, by moral adaptation, not only to perform
the duties of the office, but to be contented in it, pretend to nothing
beyond it, not to look above himself with regret or envy, satisfied with
the society around him, and feel, moreover, that elsewhere he would be
out of his element and uncomfortable.

Life, thus restricted and circumscribed, was more cheerful then than at
the present day; souls, less disturbed and less strained, less exhausted
and less burdened with cares, were healthier. The Frenchman, exempt from
modern preoccupations, followed amiable and social instincts, inclined
to take things easily, and of a playful disposition owing to his natural
talent for amusing himself by amusing others, in mutual enjoyment
of each other's company and without calculation, through easy and
considerate intercourse, smiling or laughing, in short, in a constant
flow of inspiration, good-humor and gayety.[3315] It is probable that,
if the Revolution had not intervened, the great parvenus of the time
and of the Empire would, like their forerunners, have submitted to
prevailing necessities and readily accommodated themselves to th