The fact is, that as by degrees the government of the lordships became disorganised, and the States-General grew rarer or ceased altogether--that as the general liberties of the country were finally destroyed, involving the local liberties in their ruin--the burgess and the noble ceased to come into contact in public life. They no longer felt the necessity of standing by one another, or of a mutual compact; every day rendered them more independent of each other, but at the same time estranged them more and more. In the eighteenth century this revolution was fully accomplished; the two conditions of men never met but by accident in private life. Thenceforth the two classes were not merely rivals but enemies.[37] One circumstance which seems very peculiar to France, was that at the very time when the order of nobility was thus losing its political powers, the nobles individually acquired several privileges which they had never possessed before, or increased those which they already enjoyed. It was as if the members enriched themselves with the spoil of the body. The nobility had less and less right to command, but the nobles had more and more the exclusive prerogative of being the first servants of the master. It was more easy for a man of low birth to become an officer under Louis XIV. than under Louis XVI.; this frequently happened in Prussia at a time when there was no example of such a thing in France. Every one of these privileges once obtained adhered to the blood and was inseparable from it. The more the French nobility ceased to be an aristocracy, the more did it become a caste.