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===Origins=== Gobineau came from an old well-established aristocratic family.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Arthur-comte-de-Gobineau|title=Arthur de Gobineau French Diplomat, Writer, and Ethnologist |access-date=2 September 2016|website=britannica.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160701230138/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Arthur-comte-de-Gobineau|archive-date=1 July 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> His father, Louis de Gobineau (1784–1858), was a military officer and staunch [[royalist]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/gobineau |title=Gobineau, Joseph Arthur de|year=2012|website=iranicaonline.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130517032222/http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/gobineau|archive-date=17 May 2013|url-status=live}}</ref> His mother, Anne-Louise Magdeleine de Gercy, was the daughter of a non-noble royal tax official. The de Gercy family lived in the French Crown colony of [[Saint-Domingue]] (modern [[Haiti]]) for a time in the 18th century. Reflecting his hatred of the [[French Revolution]], Gobineau later wrote: "My birthday is [[Bastille Day|July 14th]], the date on which the Bastille was captured-which goes to prove how opposites may come together".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=19}} As a boy and young man, Gobineau loved the [[Middle Ages]], which he saw as a golden age of [[chivalry]] and [[knighthood]] much preferable to his own time.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=14}} Someone who knew Gobineau as a teenager described him as a romantic, "with chivalrous ideas and a heroic spirit, dreaming of what was most noble and most grand".{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=14}} Gobineau's father was committed to restoring the [[House of Bourbon]] and helped the [[royalist]] [[Jules de Polignac|Polignac brothers]] to escape from France.{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=133}} As punishment he was imprisoned by [[Napoleon]]'s secret police but was freed when the Allies took Paris in 1814.{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=133}} During the [[Hundred Days]] the de Gobineau family fled [[France]]. After Napoleon's final overthrow following the [[Battle of Waterloo]], Louis de Gobineau was rewarded for his loyalty to the House of Bourbon by being made a captain in the [[:fr:Garde royale (France)|Royal Guard]] of King [[Louis XVIII]].{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=133}} The pay for a Royal Guardsman was very low, and the de Gobineau family struggled on his salary.{{sfn|Budil|2008|p=133}} Magdeleine de Gobineau abandoned her husband for her children's tutor Charles de La Coindière. Together with her lover she took her son and two daughters on extended wanderings across eastern France, Switzerland and the [[Grand Duchy of Baden]].{{sfn|Budil|2008|pp=133–4}} To support herself, she turned to fraud (for which she was imprisoned). His mother became a severe embarrassment to Gobineau, who never spoke to her after he turned twenty.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=12}} For the young de Gobineau, committed to upholding traditional aristocratic and [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] values, the disintegration of his parents' marriage, his mother's open relationship with her lover, her fraudulent acts, and the turmoil imposed by being constantly on the run and living in poverty were all very traumatic.{{sfn|Biddiss|1970|p=12}}
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