“With this,” explained the manifesto, “we open to each deserving man of plebeian condition a place, we indicate and offer by this our confederation an opportunity to reach and acquire the honors, prerogatives, and benefits which the noble estate enjoys—”
When this introduction was read at the royal council, a deep silence followed. Those who with the king desired most earnestly that access to rights of nobility should be open to people of lower station thought that they would have to overcome, endure, and break no small opposition; that whole years would pass before it would be safe to give utterance to anything similar; meanwhile that same nobility which hitherto had been so jealous of its prerogatives, so stubborn in appearance, opened wide the gate to the gray crowds of peasants.
The
