“Good society in France, they say, is very exclusive. It does not
deserve that reputation. Except, perhaps, a score of houses, where old
traditions are still preserved, all other houses are wide open to the
first-comer, man or woman, who drives up in a carriage. And the number
of such first-comers is prodigiously large. Where do they come from? No
one knows. From Russia, from Turkey, from America, from Hungary, from
very far, from everywhere, from below, I do not count the impudent
fellows who are still muddy from the gutter in which they have been
lying. How do all these people live? That is a mystery. But they do
live, and they live well. They have, or at least seem to have, money;
and they shine, they intrigue, they conspire, they make believe, and
they extort. So that I verily believe all this high-life society, by
dint of helping one another, of pushing and crowding in, will, in the
end, be master of all. You may say that I am not in the crowd. Very
true. I willingly shake hands with the workmen who work for me, and
who earn their living worthily; but I do not shake hands with these
ambiguous personages in yellow kids, who have no title but their
impudence, and no means of living but their underhand intrigues.”
He addressed himself apparently to no one, following, with his absent-
minded glance, the crowd in the garden; and yet, by his peculiar
manner, you would have known that he was speaking at some one among the
listeners.
However, it was evident that he had no success, and that his doctrine
seemed to be utterly out of season, and almost ridiculous. A young man
with a delicate black mustache, and extremely well dressed, even turned
to his neighbor, and asked,--
“Who is our friend, the preacher?”
“What! don’t you know him?” replied the other.
“That is the Duke of Champdoce, you know, who has married a princess of
Mussidan. Quite an original.”