esentatives of that great and
beautiful thing, Service; giving to that often discredited word its
original meaning, the relation between feudal lord and servitor. That
relation, only to be found in some out-of-the-way province, or among a
few old servants of the King, did honor alike to a noblesse that could
call forth such affection, and to a bourgeoisie that could conceive
it. Such noble and magnificent devotion is no longer possible among
us. Noble houses have no servitors left; even as France has no longer
a King, nor an hereditary peerage, nor lands that are bound
irrevocably to an historic house, that the glorious names of the
nation may be perpetuated. Chesnel was not merely one of the obscure
great men of private life; he was something more--he was a great fact.
In his sustained self-devotion is there not something indefinably
solemn and sublime, something that rises above the one beneficent
deed, or the heroic height which is reached by a moment's supreme
effort? Chesnel's virtues belong essentially to the classes which
stand between the poverty of the people on the one hand, and the
greatness of the aristocracy on the other; for these can combine
homely burgher virtues with the heroic ideals of the noble,
enlightening both by a solid education.

Victurnien was not well looked upon at Court; there was no more chance
of a great match for him, nor a place. His Majesty steadily refused to
raise the d'Esgrignons to the peerage, the one royal favor which could
rescue Victurnien from his wretched position. It was impossible that
he should marry a bourgeoise heiress in his father's lifetime, so he
was bound to live on shabbily under the paternal roof with memories of
his two years of splendor in Paris, and the lost love of a great lady
to bear him company. He grew moody and depressed, vegetating at home
with a careworn aunt and a half heart-broken father, who attributed
his son's condition to a wasting malady. Chesnel was no longer there.

The Marquis died in 1830. The great d'Esgrignon, with a following of
all the less infirm noblesse from the Collection of Antiquities, went
to wait upon Charles X. at Nonancourt; he paid his respects to his
sovereign, and swelled the meagre train of the fallen king. It was an
act of courage which seems simple enough to-day, but, in that time of
enthusiastic revolt, it was heroism.

"The Gaul has conquered!" These were the Marquis' last words.

By that time du Croisier's victory w