she would have, the receptions she would hold, and the two months which,
like the Beauchenes, she would spend at the seaside every summer, Mathieu
looked at her and her husband and pondered their position. Their case was
very different from that of old Moineaud, who knew that he would never be
a cabinet minister. Morange possibly dreamt that his wife would indeed
make him a minister some day. Every petty bourgeois in a democratic
community has a chance of rising and wishes to do so. Indeed, there is a
universal, ferocious rush, each seeking to push the others aside so that
he may the more speedily climb a rung of the social ladder. This general
ascent, this phenomenon akin to capillarity, is possible only in a
country where political equality and economic inequality prevail; for
each has the same right to fortune and has but to conquer it. There is,
however, a struggle of the vilest egotism, if one wishes to taste the
pleasures of the highly placed, pleasures which are displayed to the gaze
of all and are eagerly coveted by nearly everybody in the lower spheres.
Under a democratic constitution a nation cannot live happily if its
manners and customs are not simple, and if the conditions of life are not
virtually equal for one and all. Under other circumstances than these the
liberal professions prove all-devouring: there is a rush for public
functions; manual toil is regarded with contempt; luxury increases and
becomes necessary; and wealth and power are furiously appropriated by
assault in order that one may greedily taste the voluptuousness of
enjoyment. And in such a state of affairs, children, as Valerie put it,
were incumbrances, whereas one needed to be free, absolutely unburdened,
if one wished to climb over all one's competitors.

Mathieu also thought of that law of imitation which impels even the least
fortunate to impoverish themselves by striving to copy the happy ones of
the world. How great the distress which really lurks beneath that envied
luxury that is copied at such great cost! All sorts of useless needs are