No coterie in England or in this country corresponds at all to this French community. Much as they love to amuse themselves, the idea of meeting any but their own set has never passed through their well-dressed heads. They differ from their parents in that they have broken away from many antiquated habits. Their houses are no longer lay hermitages, and their opera boxes are regularly filled, but no foreigner is ever received, no ambitious parvenu accepted among them. Ostracism here means not a ten years' exile, but lifelong banishment.
The contrast is strong between this rigor and the enthusiasm with which wealthy new-comers are welcomed into London society or by our own upper crust, so full of unpalatable pieces of dough. This exclusiveness of the titled French reminds me--incongruously enough--of a certain arrangement of graves in a Lenox cemetery, where the members of an old New England family lie buried in a circle with their feet toward its centre. When I asked, many years ago, the reason for this arrangement, a wit of that day--a daughter, by the bye, of Mrs. Stowe--replied, "So that when they rise at the Last Day only members of their own family may face them!"
One is struck by another peculiarity of these French men and women--their astonishing proficiency in les arts d'agrement.
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