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The parvenus themselves of the Revolution, the generals, the deputies, dislike Jacobin institutions; they place children in the chapel schools and send them to the confessional, while the deputies who, in '92 and '93, showed the most animosity to priests, do not consider their daughter well brought up unless she has made her first communion. The little are still more hostile than the great.
Bets were exchanged freely as to the result of this bold move on the part of a girl too fastidious to marry any of the English parvenus that addressed her, too poor to marry in her own class. The wedding took place a few months later, immediately after Mrs. Montgomery's death; an event which left Lady Mary the guest in a foreign country of a young bachelor.
"A man who used to be a street porter at Marseilles." M. Noel took offence at this. "Hey, down there, old Francis, you are very glad all the same to have him to pay your card-debts, the street porter of La Cannebriere. You may well be embarrassed by parvenus like us who lend millions to kings, and whom grand seigneurs like Mora do not blush to admit to their tables."
"Pardieu, I have bought enough fish of him to know his name." "Then, why did you think of giving your daughter to him?" "Because Fernand and Danglars, being both parvenus, both having become noble, both rich, are about equal in worth, excepting that there have been certain things mentioned of him that were never said of me." "What?" "Oh, nothing!"
He thought himself superior to all those parvenus, whose success inspired him with consuming jealousy. He belonged to the class of minds ambitious of everything, capable of all things, from whom success is, as it were, stolen; who go their way dashing at a hundred luminous points, and settling upon none, exhausting at last the good-will of others.
At its fall the ancestral acres of how many spendthrift heirs have passed away from their families forever into the hands of wealthy plebeian parvenus! By a few strokes Dives's splendid mansion, and Croesus's magnificent country-seat, and Phaëton's famous fast horses become the property of others. At its tap human beings have been sold into worse than Egyptian bondage.
All that the inhabitants think about are the King, the Queen Regent, yachts, bull fights, and the latest fashions in trousers. San Sebastian is a conglomeration of parvenus and upstarts from Pamplona, Saragossa, Valladolid, Chile and Chuquisaca, who are anxious to show themselves off.
Whereupon two Insurance Companies went to law with him, and a suit ensued, which ended in their paying costs, in addition to what they had before paid Squire Alden, who winked in a derisive manner at the Board of Directors when he received its check. There were others who belonged in the category of Decayed Families, as exclusive as they were shabby. There were parvenus, which included myself.
"Here," writes Edmond About, "are only two categories of people, those who have made a fortune and those who are trying to make one, and the principal inhabitants are parvenus in the most honourable sense of the word." "In the most honourable sense of the word," the Cathedral of Marseilles is also typical of the city, "parvenue."
"Lese-majeste is so common nowadays!" she mused; "It is such an ordinary thing to hear vulgar parvenus talk of their king as if he were a public-house companion of theirs, that it is somewhat remarkable to find one who speaks of his monarch with loyalty and respect. I suppose, however, like everyone else, he has his own ends to serve!
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