In general, we may conceive of the lesser nobles, deprived of their useful function of regulating and administering the country, leading somewhat penurious and useless lives. They hunted a good deal, they slept long. Generally they did not eat overmuch, for gluttony is not a vice of their race. They grumbled at the ascendency of the court, and at the new army-regulations. They preserved in their families the noble virtues of dignity and obedience. Children asked their parents' blessing on their knees before they went to bed. The elder Mirabeau, the grim Friend of Men, still knelt nightly before his mother in his fiftieth year. The children honored their parents in fact as well as in form, and took no important step in life without paternal consent. The boys ran rather wild in their youth, but settled down at the approach of middle life; the oldest inheriting the few or barren paternal acres; the younger sons equally noble, and thus debarred from lucrative occupations, pushing their fortunes in the army. The girls were married young or went into a convent. Marriages were arranged entirely by the parents. "My father," said a young nobleman, "I am told that you have agreed on a marriage for me. Would you be kind enough to tell me if the report be true, and what is the name of the lady?" "My son," answered his parent, "be so good as to mind your own business, and not to come to me with questions."[Footnote: Babeau, _Le Village_, 158. Ch. de Kibbe, 169. Mme. de Montagu, 57. Genlis, _Dictionnaire des Étiquettes,_ i. 71. Lavergne, _Les Économistes,_ 127.] CHAPTER VII. THE ARMY. The nobility of France was essentially a military class. Its privileges were claimed on account of services rendered in the field. The priests pray, the nobles fight, the commons pay for all; such was the theory of the state. It is true that the nobility no longer furnished the larger part of the armies; that the old feudal levies of ban and rear-ban, in which the baron rode at the head of his vassals, were no longer called out. But still the soldier's life was considered the proper career of the nobleman. A large proportion of the members of the order were commissioned officers, and most officers were members of the order.