people, whose rights it sustained as identical with its own, while the noblesse of France, on the contrary, always yielded to royal authority—auf Gnade und Ungnade—in favour or in disgrace.[1] It has not since the days of Mazarin resisted their power; it has only sought to profit by supple court-service, and by most submissive and subordinate service (Handlangergemeinschaft); with its kings it oppressed and betrayed the people. All unconsciously the French nobility revenged itself for former wrongs from these monarchs by reducing them to a debilitating immorality, and making them almost idiotic by flattery. Of course, it also, weakened and deprived of all spirit, fell with the old royalty; the 10th of August only found in the Tuileries a grey-haired decrepid crowd, with brittle court-rapiers, and not one man—only a single woman who commanded resistance with firmness and courage; and even this last lady of French chivalry—the last representative of the perishing ancien régime—was not destined to descend to the grave in all the glory of her youth, and one single night made white as snow the blonde locks of the beautiful Antoinette.
It went differently with the English nobility. This has kept its strength; it is rooted in the people, in that healthy soil which receives as
- ↑ Omitted in the French version.—Translator.
