his energetic and caustic wit; a very fiend let loose now that he saw
how he had squandered his intellect in pure waste; a Bixiou vexed by
the thought that he had not come by his share of the wreckage in the
last Revolution; a Bixiou with a kick for every one, like Pierrot at
the Funambules. Bixiou had the whole history of his own times at his
finger-ends, more particularly its scandalous chronicle, embellished
by added waggeries of his own. He sprang like a clown upon everybody's
back, only to do his utmost to leave the executioner's brand upon
every pair of shoulders.

The first cravings of gluttony satisfied, our neighbors reached the
stage at which we also had arrived, to wit, the dessert; and, as we
made no sign, they believed that they were alone. Thanks to the
champagne, the talk grew confidential as they dallied with the dessert
amid the cigar smoke. Yet through it all you felt the influence of the
icy _esprit_ that leaves the most spontaneous feeling frost-bound and
stiff, that checks the most generous inspirations, and gives a sharp
ring to the laughter. Their table-talk was full of bitter irony which
turns a jest into a sneer; it told of the exhaustion of souls given
over to themselves; of lives with no end in view but the satisfaction
of self--of egoism induced by these times of peace in which we live. I
can think of nothing like it save a pamphlet against mankind at large
which Diderot was afraid to publish, a book that bares man's breast
simply to expose the plague-sores upon it. We listened to just such a
pamphlet as _Rameau's Nephew_, spoken aloud in all good faith, in the
course of after-dinner talk in which nothing, not even the point which
the speaker wished to carry, was sacred from epigram; nothing taken
for granted, nothing built up except on ruins, nothing reverenced save
the sceptic's adopted article of belief--the omnipotence, omniscience,
and universal applicability of money.