No first night or ball was complete without him, Sagan. The very mention of his name in their articles must have kept the wolf from the door of needy reporters. No _debutante_, social or theatrical, felt sure of her success until it had received the hall-mark of his approval. When he assisted at a dress rehearsal, the actors and the managers paid him more attention than Sarcey or Sardou, for he was known to be the real arbiter of their fate. His word was law, the world bowed before it as before the will of an autocrat. Mature matrons received his dictates with the same reverence that the Old Guard evinced for Napoleon's orders. Had he not led them on to victory in their youth? On the boulevards or at a race-course, he was the one person always known by sight and pointed out. "There goes Sagan!" He had become an institution. One does not know exactly how or why he achieved the position, which made him the most followed, flattered, and copied man of his day. It certainly was unique! The Prince of Sagan is descended from Maurice de Saxe (the natural son of the King of Saxony and Aurora of Koenigsmark), who in his day shone brilliantly at the French court and was so madly loved by Adrienne Lecouvreur. From his great ancestor, Sagan inherited the title of Grand Duke Of Courland (the estates have been absorbed into a neighboring empire). Nevertheless, he is still an R.H., and when crowned heads visit Paris they dine with him and receive him on a footing of equality. He married a great fortune, and the daughter of the banker Selliere. Their house on the Esplanade des Invalides has been for years the centre of aristocratic life in Paris; not the most exclusive circle, but certainly the gayest of this gay capital, and from the days of Louis Philippe he has given the keynote to the fast set. Oddly enough, he has always been a great favorite with the lower classes (a popularity shared by all the famous dandies of history). The people appear to find in them the personification of all aspirations toward the elegant and the ideal. Alcibiades, Buckingham, the Duc de Richelieu, Lord Seymour, Comte d'Orsay, Brummel, Grammont-Caderousse, shared this favor, and have remained legendary characters, to whom their disdain for everything vulgar, their worship of their own persons, and many costly follies gave an ephemeral empire. Their power was the more arbitrary and despotic in that it was only nominal and undefined, allowing them to rule over the fashions, the tastes, and the pastimes of their contemporaries with undivided sway, making them envied, obeyed, loved, but rarely overthrown.