One of his
most rigid principles was to recognize no nobility in France but that
of the peerage--the only families that might enjoy any privileges.
"A nobility bereft of privileges," he would say, "is a tool without a
handle."
As far from Lafayette's party as he was from La Bourdonnaye's, he
ardently engaged in the task of general reconciliation, which was
to result in a new era and splendid fortunes for France. He
strove to convince the families who frequented his drawing-room,
or those whom he visited, how few favorable openings would
henceforth be offered by a civil or military career. He urged
mothers to give their boys a start in independent and industrial
professions, explaining that military posts and high Government
appointments must at last pertain, in a quite constitutional
order, to the younger sons of members of the peerage. According
to him, the people had conquered a sufficiently large share in
practical government by its elective assembly, its appointments
to law-offices, and those of the exchequer, which, said he, would
always, as heretofore, be the natural right of the distinguished
men of the third estate.
These new notions of the head of the Fontaines, and the prudent
matches for his eldest girls to which they had led, met with strong
resistance in the bosom of his family. The Comtesse de Fontaine
remained faithful to the ancient beliefs which no woman could disown,
who, through her mother, belonged to the Rohans.
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