of power is constantly playing its fascinating gue. Thus people of aristocratic habits, male as well as female, avoid sinking utterly exhausted into a chair; when everybody else makes himself comfortable, in the train, for instance, they avoid reclining; they do not seem to get tired after standing for hours at Court; they do not furnish their houses in a comfortable, but in a spacious and dignified style, as though they were the abodes of greater and taller beings; to a provoking speech they reply with deportment and intellectual clearness, not as if horrified, crushed, abashed, out of breath, after the manner of plebeians. In the same measure as the aristocrat knows how to preserve the appearance of an ever-present great physical strenghı, he, by keeping up an unchanging serenity and civility of mamers, even under trying circumstances, wishes to convey the impression that his soul and intellect are a match to all dangers and surprises. A distinguished nature may, as regards the objects of the passions, be either like a rider, who delights in making a fiery proud animal step the Spanish pace, we need only think of the age of Louis XIV.,—or like the one who feels his horse dart away under him like an elementary force, on the borders of where horse and rider lose their heads, but who, in the enjoyment of delight, at that very time, keeps a clear head: in both instances the aristocratic culture breathes power, and, though very frequently requiring in its customs only the semblance of a of power, the real sense of
