There is but one way that an outsider can enter this Gallic paradise. By marrying into it! Two of the seven ladies in question lack the quarterings of the rest. Miss Mitchell was only a charming American girl, and the mother of the Princesse Radziwill was Mlle. Blanc of Monte Carlo. However, as in most religions there are ceremonies that purify, so in this case the sacrament of marriage is supposed to have reconstructed these wives and made them genealogically whole.
There is something incongruous to most people in the idea of a young girl hardly out of the schoolroom bearing a ponderous title. The pomp and circumstance that surround historic names connect them (through our reading) with stately matrons playing the "heavy female" roles in life's drama, much as Lady Macbeth's name evokes the idea of a raw-boned mother-in-law sort of person, the reverse of attractive, and quite the last woman in the world to egg her husband on to a crime - unless it were wife murder!
Names like de Chevreuse, or de la Rochefoucauld, seem appropriate only to the warlike amazons of the Fronde, or corpulent kill-joys in powder and court trains of the Mme.
Etiquette school; it comes as a shock, on being presented to a group of girlish figures in the latest cut of golfing skirts, who are chattering odds on the Grand Prix in faultless English, to realize that these light-hearted GAMINES are the present owners of sonorous titles. One shudders to think what would have been the effect on poor Marie Antoinette's priggish mentor could she have foreseen her granddaughter, clad in knickerbockers, running a petroleum tricycle in the streets of Paris, or pedalling "tandem" across country behind some young cavalry officer of her connection.
Let no simple-minded American imagine, however, that these up- to-date women are waiting to welcome him and his family to their intimacy. The world outside of France does not exist for a properly brought up French aristocrat. Few have travelled; from their point of view, any man with money, born outside of France, is a "Rasta," unless he come with diplomatic rank, in which case his position at home is carefully ferreted out before he is entertained. Wealthy foreigners may live for years in Paris, without meeting a single member of this coterie, who will, however, join any new club that promises to be amusing; but as soon as the "Rastas" get a footing, "the seven" and their following withdraw.
Puteaux had its day, then the "Polo Club" in the Bois became their rendezvous. But as every wealthy American and "smart" Englishwoman passing the spring in Paris rushed for that too open circle, like tacks toward a magnet, it was finally cut by the "Duchesses," who, together with such attractive aides-de- camp as the Princesse de Poix, Mmes. de Murat, de Morny, and de Broglie, inaugurated last spring "The Ladies' Club of the Acacias," on a tiny island belonging to the "Tir aux Pigeons," which, for the moment, is the fad of its founders.
It must be a surprise to those who do not know French family pride to learn that exclusive as these women are there are cliques in France today whose members consider the ladies we have been speaking of as lacking in reserve. Men like Guy de Durfort, Duc de Lorges, or the Duc de Massa, and their womenkind, hold themselves aloof on an infinitely higher plane, associating with very few and scorning the vulgar herd of "smart" people!
It would seem as if such a vigorous weeding out of the unworthy would result in a rather restricted comradeship. Who the "elect" are must become each year more difficult to discern.
Their point of view in this case cannot differ materially from that of the old Methodist lady, who, while she was quite sure no one outside of her own sect could possibly be saved, had grave fears concerning the future of most of the congregation.
She felt hopeful only of the clergyman and herself, adding:
"There are days when I have me doubts about the minister!"
