He hunted no heart-burns.

Ambition did not tempt him; why should he listen to long speeches, and court the unworthy, and descend to intrigue, for so precarious and equivocal a prize as a place in the Government, when he could be De Beaurepaire without trouble or loss of self-respect?
Social ambition could get little hold of him; let parvenus give balls half in doors, half out, and light two thousand lamps, and waste their substance battling and manoeuvring for fashionable distinction; he had nothing to gain by such foolery, nothing to lose by modest living; he was the twenty-ninth Baron of Beaurepaire.

So wise, so proud, so little vain, so strong in health and wealth and honor, one would have said nothing less than an earthquake could shake this gentleman and his house.

Yet both were shaken, though rooted by centuries to the soil; and by no vulgar earthquake.
For years France had bowed in silence beneath two galling burdens--a selfish and corrupt monarchy, and a multitudinous, privileged, lazy, and oppressive aristocracy, by whom the peasant was handled like a Russian serf.

[Said peasant is now the principal proprietor of the soil.] The lower orders rose upon their oppressors, and soon showed themselves far blacker specimens of the same breed.