e elect of the people, and that the people were their
fittest companions. Their erstwhile leader and chief scorned to stoop to
such tricks. He was an educated man, with a thick veneer of the
gentleman about him, which, however, did not prevent him from being one
of the two most arrant snobs I have met anywhere. I advisedly say
anywhere, for France herself does not produce that objectionable genus
to any appreciable extent. You may find a good many cads, you will find
comparatively few snobs. Compared to Armand Marrast, Eugene Sue was
nowhere as a snob. He was a thickset man with a rubicund face, with a
mass of grey woolly hair and a kind of stubbly, small moustache. His
manners were supposed to be modelled on those of the nobles of the old
regime; said manners mainly consisting of swaggering impudence to those
whom he considered his equals, and freezing insolence to those he deemed
his inferiors. The latter, I need not say, were by far the most
numerous. He who bellowed most loudly that birth should carry no
privilege, never forgot to remind his hearers, by deeds, if not by
words, that he was of noble descent. "Si sa famille etait noble, sa mere
s'est surement endormie dans l'antichambre un jour qu'un
valet-de-chambre entreprenant etait trop pres," said the Marquis
d'Arragon one evening.[50] He felt greatly flattered at the
caricaturists of the day representing him in the court dress of Louis
XVI.'s reign, though to most people he looked like a "marquis de quatre
sous."[51]

[Footnote 50: The remark was not original. The Marquise
d'Espremenil said it of herself when she saw her son join the
Revolution of '89.--EDITOR.]

[Footnote 51: The peripatetic vendors of songs, dressed as
nobles, who up till '60 were frequently singing their
compositions in the street.--EDITOR.]

He professed to be very fond of antique furniture and decorations, and
this fondness was the main cause of his ousting his former subaltern,
Buchez, from the presidential chair of the Assembly, for, shortly before
the revolution of '48, the official residence of that functionary had
been put in thorough repair, its magnificent furniture had been
restored, etc.

The depression of business inspired M. Armand Marrast with the happy
thought of giving some entertainments in the hope of reviving it. During
the Third Republic, though I had ceased to live in France permanently, I
have seen a good many mot