United States or Sint Maarten ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Trajano Romanorum Imperatori, Wilhelmus Imperator Germanorum! But all that Hohenstaufen-Hohenzollern genealogy is mythical history. Compared with the ancient House of Habsburg or of Bourbon, the Hohenzollern may well be called theparvenusof royalty.

An evacuating column of ousted and dejected office-holders, prophesying national disaster at the hands of parvenus, meets an advancing column of would-be office-holders rejoicing in general over their party's success and palpitantly eager for individual advantage. As in life, so in Washington on Inauguration Day, humour and pathos mingle.

"A man who was once a porter at Marseille." At that M. Noël bristled up. "I say there, old Francis, you're glad enough to have the porter of La Cannebière pay for your roastings at bouillotte all the same. You won't find many parvenus like us, who loan millions to kings, and whom great noblemen like Mora don't blush to receive at their table."

He was one of those young parvenus of the second generation who form an aristocracy of letters, and are the patricians of the Third Republic. His name was Lucien Levy-Coeur.

It is by no means uncommon to see many of them begin their dinner by swallowing six or seven dozen of oysters and a bottle of white wine, by way of laying a foundation for a potage en tortue and eight or ten other rich dishes. Such are the modern parvenus, whose craving appetites, in eating and drinking, as in every thing else, are not easily satiated.

"Maurice!" she exclaimed reproachfully. "Nay! I'll not say it again: I have sufficient reason left in me, I think, to show these parvenus how we, of the old regime, bear every blow which fate chooses to deal to us.

It breaks down all obstacles confronting it the forces of traditions, laws, institutions, interests of classes, opposition of parties, the efforts of thinking men. The historical aristocracy becomes impoverished and weak; before it rise to power the millionaires, the parvenus, the great capitalists, enriched in the provinces.

Whoever else are parvenus, the Smiths are not parvenus. From the darkest dawn of history this clan has gone forth to battle; its trophies are on every hand; its name is everywhere; it is older than the nations, and its sign is the Hammer of Thor. But as I also remarked, it is not quite the usual case.

Charles VIII. was young, light-brained, romantic, and ruled by parvenus, who had an interest in disturbing the old order of the monarchy. He lent a willing ear to Lodovico's invitation, backed as this was by the eloquence and passion of numerous Italian refugees and exiles.

Now they are apt to say that PARVENUS are of all men the most exacting and the most purse-proud; and that a mistress who has been a servant is harsher to her female dependants than one who has been accustomed to keep domestics all her life. It is difficult for me to conceive this; but there must be truth in it, or it would not be a proverb in all languages. You will be an exception, Francis.