ords, they must be spoken: Duchesses are
vanishing, and marquises too! As to the baronesses--I must apologize to
Madame de Nucingen, who will become a countess when her husband is made
a peer of France--baronesses have never succeeded in getting people to
take them seriously."

"Aristocracy begins with the viscountess," said Blondet with a smile.

"Countesses will survive," said de Marsay. "An elegant woman will be
more or less of a countess--a countess of the Empire or of yesterday,
a countess of the old block, or, as they say in Italy, a countess by
courtesy. But as to the great lady, she died out with the dignified
splendor of the last century, with powder, patches, high-heeled
slippers, and stiff bodices with a delta stomacher of bows. Duchesses
in these days can pass through a door without any need to widen it for
their hoops. The Empire saw the last of gowns with trains! I am still
puzzled to understand how a sovereign who wished to see his drawing-room
swept by ducal satin and velvet did not make indestructible laws.
Napoleon never guessed the results of the Code he was so proud of.
That man, by creating duchesses, founded the race of our 'ladies' of
to-day--the indirect offspring of his legislation."

"It was logic, handled as a hammer by boys just out of school and
by obscure journalists, which demolished the splendors of the social
state," said the Comte de Vandenesse. "In these days every rogue who can
hold his head straight in his collar, cover his manly bosom with half an
ell of satin by way of a cuirass, display a brow where apocryphal genius
gleams under curling locks, and strut in a pair of patent-leather pumps
graced by silk socks which cost six francs, screws his eye-glass into
one of his eye-sockets by puckering up his cheek, and whether he be an
attorney's clerk, a contractor's son, or a banker's bastard, he stares
impertinently at the prettiest duchess, appraises her as she walks
downstairs, and says to his friend--dressed by Buisson, as we all are,
and mounted in patent-leather like any duke himself--'There, my boy,
that is a perfect lady.'"

"You have not known how to form a party," said Lord Dudley; "it will
be a long time yet before you have a policy. You talk a great deal in
France about organizing labor, and you have not yet organized property.
So this is what happens: Any duke--and even in the time of Louis XVIII.
and Charles X. there were some left who had two hundred thousand
francs a y