And thus, with a strange persistence, it constantly tended to lift into its own ranks by its example, its doctrines and its easy accessibility all men who felt within themselves a spark of genius or talent, or even ambition merely. This atmosphere was very favourable to the development of the theory of social aesthetics of which Castiglione has etched the principal features. “Luxury must be opposed, even if we have recourse to law; social life must be given a moral and governmental goal; to keep the appetites under, the laws must find effectual support in custom. The power of a single ruler fosters corruption; but it has this advantage—that wisdom, goodness and justice are more easily found in a single individual supported by strong traditions than in a fortuitous assemblage of obscure citizens.” What is wanted is to institute a kingship in the world for which justice and beauty are the qualifications, and which is thus more real and of a diviner right than any other. Mammon, that is, the love of gold, the love of power and pleasure, can only reign in a world of night, when we have eyes but cannot see, when we have lips from which no human cry issues, when we are dead to enthusiasm, and when our whole life consists in eating and drinking. In France the socialist danger, presenting itself in a much less acute form, could not produce the same effects. The people who were to show their teeth fifty years later were as yet silent, and there was no anxiety about the future except among the cultivated classes. Moneyed people bore themselves with becoming modesty, and remained on the best of terms with the most notable representatives of the old nobility. But the nobility, being no longer feudal, was no longer of much account, and a moral crisis of exceeding gravity took place in the ranks of this aristocracy based wholly on birth and fortune. Sheer vanity took the place of pride; the “smoke”[129] of titles became a more powerful motive than the love of glory. The great financiers almost all became barons, in order to get above finance; the holders of fiefs became barons, counts and marquises. Ordinary mortals came to hold fiefs; the most insignificant dovecot was transformed into a château. Society moved on a step, and everybody was satisfied. It was quite a steeplechase in the Italian style. Pontanus,[130] for all his malicious ridicule of it, had himself vainly solicited the title of baron. The good duke of Urbino, a great philosopher whose elevation was of very recent date, employed the assassin’s knife to put out of the way a girl of the lesser nobility whom his eldest son loved and wished to marry, and Louise of Savoy warmly approved of this magnificent implacability.[131]