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"Why, I could prove it by purchasing a dozen marquisates, if I thought proper!" "Granted, Mr Forster. In our country they are to be purchased; but we make a great difference between the parvenus of the present day and the ancienne noblesse." "Well, Mr Marquis, just as you please; but I consider myself quite as good as a French marquis," replied Mr Forster, in a tone of irritation.
A few parvenus had bought property in the neighborhood, but the vicomte did not know them. He rose to go, and his last look was for Jeanne as though he would have made his adieu to her specially friendly and tender. The baroness thought him charming and very comme il faut, and the baron remarked that he was a very well-educated man.
Stone axe, spear and bow, javelin and broadsword, blunderbuss and creaking cannon all the weapons of all stages in the art of war had gone trooping past. Now had come the speck in the sky, straight on, like some projectile born of the ether. "Beside the old baron, we are parvenus," Marta would say. "And what a parvenu the baron would have been to the Roman aristocrat!"
Sensible men of rank, who, having enjoyed their dignity from their birth, may reasonably be expected to grow occasionally tired of it; often like mixing with those the most who are the least dazzled by the condescension; I do not mean to say, with the vulgar parvenus who mistake rudeness for independence; no man forgets respect to another who knows the value of respect to himself; but the respect should be paid easily; it is not every Grand Seigneur, who like Louis XIVth., is only pleased when he puts those he addresses out of countenance.
The old Houses refused to accept his title, and would not acknowledge the upstart royal “brother.” But the very fact that the Hohenzollern are the “parvenus” of European royalty has spurred them on to more strenuous endeavours and to still higher ambitions. Their sole endeavour was to raise their position: sich considerable machen, as the Great Elector said in his quaint pidgin German.
"What do you suppose they did that for?" I asked Halicarnassus. "More aristocratical. Belong to old families. This is a new car, don't you see? We are parvenus." "Nothing of the sort," I rejoined. "This car is on fire, and they have gone into the next one so as not to be burned up." "They are not going to write books, and can afford to run away from adventures."
When exiled, they had a better chance of return to power than parvenus, whose party-cry and ensigns were comparatively fresh and stirred no sentiment of loyalty if indeed the word loyalty can be applied to that preference for the established and the customary which made the mob, distracted by the wrangling of doctrinaires and intriguers, welcome back a Bentivoglio or a Malatesta.
In our time, in these early years of the twentieth century, the novel is the prosperous parvenu of literature, and only a few of those who acknowledge its vogue and who laud its success take the trouble to recall its humble beginnings and the miseries of its youth. But like other parvenus it is still a little uncertain of its position in the society in which it moves.
Remember, you are not in possession yet. The Towers is not your place yet." "Well, I never!" exclaimed Susy. "Why, you've turned into an orator;" but Hester's words had subdued her a good deal, for if she had one source of envy, it was the envy which parvenus like her give to the old county people, and if there was an ambition in her stagnant soul, it was to be considered a county person herself.
Gracious and kind, gifted by nature with that inexpressible charm which can please without having recourse to subserviency or to making overtures, she succeeded in winning general esteem by an exquisite tact; the sensitive warnings of which enabled her to follow the delicate line along which she might satisfy the exactions of this mixed society, without humiliating the touchy pride of the parvenus, or shocking that of her own friends.
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