Then come stars of the second magnitude, men of family with ten or
twelve hundred livres a year, captains in the navy or cavalry
regiments, or nothing at all. Out on the roads, on horseback, they
rank half-way between the cure bearing the sacraments and the tax
collector on his rounds. Pretty nearly all of them have been in the
Pages or in the Household Troops, and now are peaceably ending their
days in a /faisance-valoir/, more interested in felling timber and the
cider prospects than in the Monarchy.
Still they talk of the Charter and the Liberals while the cards are
making, or over a game at backgammon, when they have exhausted the
usual stock of /dots/, and have married everybody off according to the
genealogies which they all know by heart. Their womenkind are haughty
dames, who assume the airs of Court ladies in their basket chaises.
They huddle themselves up in shawls and caps by way of full dress; and
twice a year, after ripe deliberation, have a new bonnet from Paris,
brought as opportunity offers. Exemplary wives are they for the most
part, and garrulous.
These are the principal elements of aristocratic gentility, with a few
outlying old maids of good family, spinsters who have solved the
problem: given a human being, to remain absolutely stationary. They
might be sealed up in the houses where you see them; their faces and
their dresses are literally part of the fixtures of the town, and the
province in which they dwell.
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