I'm currently reading Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" and I'm a bit confused about all the titles and how they rank. There are barons, princes/princesses, comtes, vicomtes, marquises and dukes. What do they all mean? In the book they seem almost to regard each other as equal and reserve only special regard for people directly related to royalty.
As a follow-up question: could you please explain something about what happened to them? Why did they loose their influence on French politics?
Edit: Can I sneak in another question? Could you guys tell me a bit about the whole "Salon" culture during that time period?
The survival of titles is a legacy of the monarchist National Assembly majority that drew up the Third Republic's constitutional laws in 1875: titles (restored in 1852) were retained, though former privileges (abolished in 1790) were not restored and no new hereditary titles have since been conferred. Titles remain a legal name that can't be usurped by others, but otherwise confer no status in law.
Dukes formally come at the top of the hierarchy (after the Crown in the old days, of course). Prince is an oddity, denoting royal blood but not automatically conferring top status: as I understand it, those princes who were also peers (those highest in precedence) coupled their royal title with that of duke, putting them at the top (and above other dukes). Counts and marquises (originally just a border count - compare Markgraf or Marcher Lord) were generally next, though precedence depended on the antiquity of your title. Baron was the lowest, a noble without a higher title, often the eldest son of a peer.
The nobility always considered itself a nation apart - indeed a fashionable 18th-century theory considered them a race apart, warrior Franks ruling by right over toiling subject Gauls (France's other 25 million people, who weren't too impressed with the idea).
How much they have lost their influence is another matter: a title of nobility still confers social status among France's elite, and instils some deference in society at large, at least among those not heir to the Revolution's more radical traditions.
Might want to ask your salon question separately to get a good answer