One group, educated like himself in religious institutions, preserved
the special marks of this training. They attended religious services,
received the sacrament on Easter, frequented the Catholic circles and
concealed as criminal their amorous escapades. For the most part, they
were unintelligent, acquiescent fops, stupid bores who had tried the
patience of their professors. Yet these professors were pleased to
have bestowed such docile, pious creatures upon society.

The other group, educated in the state colleges or in the _lycees_,
were less hypocritical and much more courageous, but they were neither
more interesting nor less bigoted. Gay young men dazzled by operettas
and races, they played lansquenet and baccarat, staked large fortunes
on horses and cards, and cultivated all the pleasures enchanting to
brainless fools. After a year's experience, Des Esseintes felt an
overpowering weariness of this company whose debaucheries seemed to
him so unrefined, facile and indiscriminate without any ardent
reactions or excitement of nerves and blood.

He gradually forsook them to make the acquaintance of literary men, in
whom he thought he might find more interest and feel more at ease.
This, too, proved disappointing; he was revolted by their rancorous
and petty judgments, their conversation as obvious as a church door,
their dreary discussions in which they judged the value of a book by
the number of editions it had passed and by the profits acquired. At
the same time, he noticed that the free thinkers, the doctrinaires of
the bourgeoisie, people who claimed every liberty that they might
stifle the opinions of others, were greedy and shameless puritans
whom, in education, he esteemed inferior to the corner shoemaker.

His contempt for humanity deepened. He reached the conclusion that the