Page:Reminisences of Captain Gronow.djvu/182

164 who are now supposed to be the great people of the Faubourg St. Germain are nothing more than actors, who put on a motley dress and appear before the public with a view of attracting that attention to which they are not entitled; it is, therefore, an error to suppose that the modern faubourg is anything like what it was during the days of the Bourbons. At the present moment the only practical aid the inhabitants of this locality can accord to the legitimist cause in Europe, is by getting up subscriptions for the Papacy, and such exiled sovereigns as Francis II.; and, in order to do so, they generally address themselves to married women and widows: in fact, it is from the purses of susceptible females, many of whom are English, that donations are obtained for legitimacy and Popery in distress.

It is to be regretted that the most renowned and ancient families of France have, in society and politics, yielded their places to another class. That refinement of perception, sensitiveness, and gentle bearing, which take three or four generations to produce, are no longer the characteristics of Parisian society. The gilded saloons of the Tuileries, and those magnificent hotels whose architects have not been geniuses of art,