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If it strikes a visitor as utterly ridiculous that a society, the greater part of whose members are essentially parvenus, should assume the tone and mode of thought of an old-world aristocracy, we must yet acknowledge that that society keeps up a great many traditions of refinement which are in great danger of being lost sight of in colonial life.
This imitation of Napoleon's glance was a silly satire, then popular with certain parvenus who had never seen so much as the base coin of their emperor. This glance fell upon Birotteau, a devotee of the Right, a partisan of the government, himself an element of monarchical election, like the stamp of a custom-house officer affixed to a bale of merchandise.
If such a husband could be found, it would be among the class of rich parvenus; on this point I belong to the eleventh century." "And I also," I said. "But why despair? Are there no aged peers?" "You are an apt scholar, Louise!" he exclaimed. Then he left me, smiling and kissing my hand.
It only remains to be said of this singular young man, whose character as yet was but half developed, that he had seen a great deal of the world, and could live at ease and in content with all tempers and ranks; fox-hunters or scholars, lawyers or poets, patricians or /parvenus/, it was all one to Lumley Ferrers.
A droll world, and no wonder the /parvenus/ want to upset it." Randal had hitherto supposed that this notorious tufthunter, this dandy capitalist, this money-lender, whose whole fortune had been wrung from the wants and follies of an aristocracy, was naturally a firm supporter of things as they are how could things be better for men like Baron Levy?
I have observed, in travelling through life and so has the reader, no doubt that parvenus are the greatest sticklers for aristocratic privilege; and Captain Ransom was no exception to this rule. In tumbling over some old family papers, I had found a receipt from the gallant captain's grandfather to my own progenitor, acknowledging the payment of a bill for leather breeches.
By seven in the evening the guests had begun to arrive: first, the lesser divinities, petty government officials, clerks, and merchants, with the most ceremonious greetings and the gravest airs at the start, as if they were parvenus, for so much light, so many decorations, and so much glassware had some effect.
Then too these Roman names were not new names, translations of their Greek titles, but were the names of already existing Roman deities with whom they were easily identified, so that we see at once that their coming was no real enrichment of the Roman Olympus; what they stood for was already represented there, and their coming was simply a reduplication, with the consequent result that as these parvenus increased in prominence and influence, they robbed of all their vitality the sober old Roman deities to whom they had attached themselves.
Unluckily, at Savigny, as in most of those gorgeous Parisian summer palaces, which the parvenus in commerce and speculation have made their prey, the chatelains were not in harmony with the chateau.
Our own peerage consists chiefly of parvenus. Only six of our noble families, it is said, can trace their descent in the male line without a break to the fifteenth century. The peerage of Sweden tells the same tale.
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