Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 104.djvu/105

Rh profoundly philosophical, she would, like the Duchess of Bourgogne, have cheered the old age of Louis XIV. by her witty saying; she would, in the early days of her youth, have roused, by her numerous attractions, the worn-out passions of Louis XV.

All this, let it be said without sarcasm for that vast number of young women, amiable, well-informed, regular, reasonable, and far from void of beauty, whom the higher classes and the middle classes rival one another in bringing up in a style which tends every day to confound the two classes more and more together.

Those exchanges of tides of nobility for large fortunes, which were so common under the Restoration, continued under the Monarchy of July. Under this latter régime, the balance to be made in a contract between a coat of arms and a dowry was regulated with increased parsimony, and not always so much in favour of the escutcheon. Many a young woman, inheritor of the paternal millions, laboriously accumulated in the practice of a more or less liberal profession, purchased her title of countess, and her right of presentation in the salons of the Faubourg of St. Germain, for a very modest annuity settled upon the husband, who was in no way allowed to interfere with the capital from whence it was derived. Under the junior branch, the purchase of a title of nobility experienced a great decline in value.

The parliamentary government upheld, it must be acknowledged, if not an elegant and refined phraseology in the salons, at least a certain degree of taste and ability. But still it cannot be gainsaid, that among the women who gave themselves the greatest trouble to lead the fashion, no small number were also "women of business." Many a beauty with charming eyes and most attractive and poetic countenance, in the midst of the emotions of daily life and the thousand cares and anxieties inseparable from their pretensions, would exhibit greater skill in detecting the eombinations of the Bourse than her husband, absorbed in stock-exchange speculations, and having little or nothing else to think of.

One of the most fashionable women of the Government of July, and whose exceeding beauty would have filled the salons of the Empire and the Restoration with admiration, allowed herself to be particularly carried away by what, in her case, was a family passion for gambling in the funds. She would conceive and follow out combinations of the most extensive bearing, and often conduct them to a fortunate result such as she herself had alone foreseen; and all that united to a noble patronage of art, and an admirable appreciation for intelligence and originality of views.

The most modest artist was favoured with the same delicate attentions in the salons of that lady, whose aspect and attitudes were those of a duchess, as the leading diplomatists, financiers, or statesmen of the day. A strong inclination for all that is beautiful and rare creates the love of money, and hence it is that, amidst the progress of commerce and of industry, many women, who, one would think, could have nothing better to do than to cultivate their beauty and study their dress, display a practical capacity for the most difficult and complicated affairs.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the great ladies of the court had nothing but gambling with which to ruin or to enrich themselves: in our times, intellect and talent play a far greater part in the