The numerous princes who
had tried speculation were stripped of their fortunes. The others,
terrified, called upon to pay enormous taxes, amounting to nearly
one-third of their incomes, could henceforth only wait and behold their
last stagnant millions dwindle away till they were exhausted or
distributed according to the succession laws. Such wealth as remained to
these nobles must perish, for, like everything else, wealth perishes when
it lacks a soil in which it may fructify. In all this there was solely a
question of time: eventual ruin was a foregone and irremediable
conclusion, of absolute, historical certainty. Those who resigned
themselves to the course of letting their deserted mansions still
struggled for life, seeking to accommodate themselves to present-day
exigencies; whilst death already dwelt among the others, those stubborn,
proud ones who immured themselves in the tombs of their race, like that
appalling Palazzo Boccanera, which was falling into dust amidst such
chilly gloom and silence, the latter only broken at long intervals when
the Cardinal's old coach rumbled over the grassy court.
The point which most struck Pierre, however, was that his visits to the
Trastevere and the Palazzo Farnese shed light one on the other, and led
him to a conclusion which had never previously seemed so manifest. As yet
no "people," and soon no aristocracy.
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