Nor were the nobles themselves altogether to be envied--many of them were miserably poor, and were yet compelled to support the dignity of their rank, and to appear in state at a court, at once the most splendid and most improvident in the world. They had not the resources possessed by the poorer scions of the British nobility, who are free now to act as directors of public companies, stock-brokers, wine merchants, or railway managers; who may own collieries, or hansom cabs, or breed cattle without loss of caste or privilege. As to the king, Louis XVI., he was a man of no decision of character, incapable of reading the signs of the times, or of realizing that the future of the monarchy, of France itself, depended on the reforms required in the State. So little did he appreciate the serious position that when, in 1788, his ministers were discussing where the Etats Generaux (nobles, clergy, and tiers états) should assemble in the following May, Louis suddenly cut short all their arguments by exclaiming that they could only meet at Versailles because of the hunting (_à cause des chasses_). “C’était bien de chasser qu’alors il s’agissait.” At length the storm, which had long been foreseen, burst over their heads, and in less than two years a decree was proposed (on June 20th, 1790) by Lameth, that the titles of duke, count, marquis, viscount, baron, and chevalier should be suppressed. This was carried by a large majority in the French Assembly, and all armorial bearings were abolished at the same time. When all around was in a state of turmoil and revolution, armorial book-plates became dangerous to their owners. Many were torn out and destroyed, others were altered and adapted to the feelings of the time by changing high-sounding titles into the simple style of a French citizen. The ex-libris of the Citizen Boyveau-Laffecteur may be cited as an example. Before the Revolution he used an allegorical plate on which was shown a young calf drinking at a fountain (Boyveau); on his shield he carried a stork, as an emblem of prudence and wisdom, and the whole was surmounted by the handsome coronet of a count. Now, Monsieur Boyveau-Laffecteur was a doctor of medicine, and the inventor of useful medical receipts, but whether he ever was a count, or entitled to carry the coronet of one, is more than doubtful. These are minor details, however, for when the Doctor found that coronets, and the heads that wore them, were going strangely out of fashion, he effaced the obnoxious emblem of nobility, placing in its stead an enormous and aggressively prominent cap of liberty. This altered plate is found less frequently than the former; it may be that on the restoration of the monarchy he replaced the coronet, and re-elected himself a count. [Illustration: BOOK-PLATE OF THE VICOMTE DE BOURBON BUSSET, 1788.]