XIV.
OF CERTAIN CUSTOMS.
(1.)CERTAIN people want a fortune to become ennobled.[746]
Some of these would have been ennobled[747] if they could have put off their creditors half a year longer.
Others, again, are commoners when they lay down, and rise noblemen.[748]
How many noblemen are there whose relatives are commoners?
(2.) Some man disowns his father, who is known to keep an office or a shop, and only mentions his grandfather, who has been dead this long time, is unknown and cannot be found now; he enjoys a large income, has a grand post, great connections, and wants nothing but a title to become a nobleman.
(3.) Formerly the words “granting letters of nobility” were considered good French and habitually employed, but now they have become antiquated and out of date, and the courts of justice use the word “rehabilitation.”[749] To rehabilitate supposes a wealthy man to be of noble descent,—for it is absolutely requisite he should be so,—and also his father to have forfeited the title by ploughing, digging, by becoming a pedlar, or by having been a lackey; it also supposes that the son only desires to be restored to the rights of his ancestors, and to wear the coat of arms his family always wore, though, perhaps, one of his own invention, and quite different from that on his old pewter ware; thus the granting of letters of nobility does not apply to his case, for they only confer an honour on a commoner, that is, on a man who has not yet discovered the secret of becoming rich.