Page:Reminisences of Captain Gronow.djvu/179

Rh of the provinces, or the nouveau riche, sighed in vain. It would have been easier for a young Guardsman to make his way into the Convent des Oiseaux—the fashionable convent in Paris—than for any of these parvenus to force an entrance into the Faubourg St. Germain.

One of the first acts which followed the Restoration of the Bourbons was the grant of a pecuniary indemnity, amounting to a milliard, or forty millions sterling, to be distributed amongst the emigrés who had lost fortunes or estates by their devotion to the royal family. They had now, therefore, the means of receiving their friends, political partisans, and foreigners, with more than usual splendour; and it must be admitted that those who were thought worthy to be received were treated like spoiled children, and petted and flattered to their hearts' content. In their own houses they were really des grands seigneurs, and quite incapable of treating their invited guests with the insolence that became the fashion among the Jewish parvenus during the reign of the "citizen king." It is one thing to disdain those whom one does not think worthy of our acquaintance, and another to insult those whom one has thought proper to invite.