On all
things here below they pass immutable judgments, which go to make up a
body of tradition into which no power of mortal man can infuse one
drop of wit or sense. The lives of these persons revolve with the
regularity of clockwork in an orbit of use and wont which admits of no
more deviation or change than their opinions on matters religious,
political, moral, or literary.
If a stranger is admitted to the /cenacle/, every member of it in turn
will say (not without a trace of irony), "You will not find the
brilliancy of your Parisian society here," and proceed forthwith to
criticise the life led by his neighbors, as if he himself were an
exception who had striven, and vainly striven, to enlighten the rest.
But any stranger so ill advised as to concur in any of their freely
expressed criticism of each other, is pronounced at once to be an
ill-natured person, a heathen, an outlaw, a reprobate Parisian "as
Parisians mostly are."
Before Gaston de Nueil made his appearance in this little world of
strictly observed etiquette, where every detail of life is an
integrant part of a whole, and everything is known; where the values
of personalty and real estate is quoted like stocks on the vast sheet
of the newspaper--before his arrival he had been weighed in the
unerring scales of Bayeusaine judgment.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25