The two societies naturally became exclusive.
Pierquin, though rich for a provincial lawyer, was excluded from aristocratic circles and driven back upon the bourgeoisie.

His self-love must have suffered from the successive rebuffs which he received when he felt himself insensibly set aside by people with whom he had rubbed shoulders up to the time of this social change.

He had now reached his fortieth year, the last epoch at which a man who intends to marry can think of a young wife.

The matches to which he was able to aspire were all among the bourgeoisie, but ambition prompted him to enter the upper circle by means of some creditable alliance.
The isolation in which the Claes family were now living had hitherto kept them aloof from these social changes.

Though Claes belonged to the old aristocracy of the province, his preoccupation of mind prevented him from sharing the class antipathies thus created.