If they lack the strength for this, they perish as Rome perished,
and Venice, and so many other states.
This distinction between the upper and lower spheres of social
activity, emphasized by differences in their manner of living,
necessarily implies that in the highest aristocracy there is real
worth and some distinguishing merit. In any state, no matter
what form of "government" is affected, so soon as the patrician
class fails to maintain that complete superiority which is the
condition of its existence, it ceases to be a force, and is
pulled down at once by the populace. The people always wish to
see money, power, and initiative in their leaders, hands, hearts,
and heads; they must be the spokesmen, they must represent the
intelligence and the glory of the nation. Nations, like women,
love strength in those who rule them; they cannot give love
without respect; they refuse utterly to obey those of whom they
do not stand in awe. An aristocracy fallen into contempt is a
_roi faineant_, a husband in petticoats; first it ceases to be
itself, and then it ceases to be.
And in this way the isolation of the great, the sharply marked
distinction in their manner of life, or in a word, the general
custom of the patrician caste is at once the sign of a real
power, and their destruction so soon as that power is lost. The
Faubourg Saint-Germain failed to recognise the conditions of its
being, while it would still have been easy to perpetuate its
existence, and therefore was brought low for a time.
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