moreover, with restless passions, who must always confront one
another, always spy upon each other in private life, and pull their
opponents' speeches to pieces, and live generally like two duelists
on the watch for a chance to thrust six inches of steel between an
antagonist's ribs. Each must do his best to get under his enemy's
guard, and a political hatred becomes as all-absorbing as a duel to
the death. Epigram and slander are used against individuals to bring
the party into discredit.

In such warfare as this, waged ceremoniously and without rancor on the
side of the Antiquities, while du Croisier's faction went so far as to
use the poisoned weapons of savages--in this warfare the advantages of
wit and delicate irony lay on the side of the nobles. But it should
never be forgotten that the wounds made by the tongue and the eyes, by
gibe or slight, are the last of all to heal. When the Chevalier turned
his back on mixed society and entrenched himself on the Mons Sacer of
the aristocracy, his witticisms thenceforward were directed at du
Croisier's salon; he stirred up the fires of war, not knowing how far
the spirit of revenge was to urge the rival faction. None but purists
and loyal gentlemen and women sure one of another entered the Hotel
d'Esgrignon; they committed no indiscretions of any kind; they had
their ideas, true or false, good or bad, noble or trivial, but there
was nothing to laugh at in all this. If the Liberals meant to make the
nobles ridiculous, they were obliged to fasten on the political
actions of their opponents; while the intermediate party, composed of
officials and others who paid court to the higher powers, kept the
nobles informed of all that was done and said in the Liberal camp, and
much of it was abundantly laughable. Du Croisier's adherents smarted
under a sense of inferiority, which increased their thirst for
revenge.