10 i.e., recently ennobled commoners.
The Red and the Black
for which Madame de Staël11 would have abandoned everything—and yet, for all that, I'm dying of boredom. Is there any reason why I'd be less bored, if I changed my name to the Marquise de Croisenois? "But, God in heaven!" she added, very close to tears, "isn't he a perfect man? He's this century's masterpiece of education: you just look at him, and he finds something lovable, even spiritual, to tell you. He's brave.. .. But Sorel is peculiar," she told herself, and her eyes exchanged their sorrowful appearance for an angry one. "I let him know I had something to tell him, and he can't take the trouble to come back!"