Aristocracy: Theory and Practice 63
ters who were noblemen in disguise. A half- convinced audience, or half- convinced
authors, found it more reassuring to hear middle- class life praised by their social
betters. The hearty self- congratulation of Defoe in England did not exist in
France.^36
The French bourgeois wanted nothing better than to become a noble, and there
was no trace of revolutionary sentiment against the nobility in 1760, nor any feel-
ing against the hierarchic organization of society. There was already much talk of
“equality”; but coming from a bourgeois it was likely to mean that he wanted to be
appreciated, or, from a noble, that he was willing to mix with, or even marry into,
the more affluent or interesting strata of the bourgeoisie. There was no equalitari-
anism of thought or feeling. But precisely because bourgeois and nobleman did
mingle there were psychological problems. Whether the magic circle seemed to
close or to open, there were difficulties just the same. If it closed, as when the par-
lements or army became more exclusive, it recalled memories of days when access
had been more easy. Consternation resulted for people who had no satisfying out-
let within their own class. If the circle opened, it drew newcomers in at the cost of
embarrassment and emotional insecurity. Adjustment was not easy at best; the lin-
gering effects of certain bourgeois ideas, such as the belief in thrift, hard work, and
marital fidelity, prevented the full enjoyment of the lavishness, leisure, and sexual
license more characteristic of the upper class. Many bourgeois women married
nobles, without coming to feel really accepted by their husbands’ families or
friends, or even by their husbands themselves. Sons of lawyers or merchants could
still in individual cases enter the army; but they were never allowed to forget their
inferior origins. And the same poison filtered downward. The bourgeois law stu-
dents at Besançon rioted in 1772 because the son of a wigmaker had been admit-
ted. The professors explained in vain that the universities were open to all; the
youth was still taunted “for his disorderly hair and carelessness of dress.”^37 At
Poitiers, about the same time, the law students got into a general brawl with the
younger officers of the garrison, who were nobles. Both groups had attended the
same dance, where allegedly a student had given offense to a young lady of aristo-
cratic birth by stepping on her feet. The police had to stop the ensuing disorders.^38
There was just enough separatism, and just enough mixing, to cause trouble.
36 Barber, op. cit., passim.
37 F. Delbeke, L’action politique et sociale des avocats au 18e siècle (Paris, 1927), 112–13.
38 A. C. Thibaudeau, Biographie: Mémoires (Paris, 1875), 61−62.