Noble

Reading up for a trip to southern Italy and Sicily in early June I now see Marcel Proust as a writer of the European history of nobility, a vision gained by a reading of Lampedusa's "The Leopard."

In "The Leopard Father Pirrone speaks to Don Pietrino, who's fallen asleep in the midst of the priest's monolog, saying of the nobles, "if...this class were to vanish, an equivalent one would be formed straightaway with the same qualities and the same defects; it might not be based on blood anymore, but possibly on...on, say, the length of time lived in a place, or on greater knowlege of some text considered sacred." (pg. 199, "The Leopard," Pantheon, 2007). 

As there is presently no nobility in America, though we are striving toward such a class, I define a noble here as a person who still smokes cigarettes but is thoughtful enough to do so outside your house, and does not kick the butts to the curb.