thing as mystery; they see the reverse side of society, whose
confessors they are, and despise it. Then, whatever they do, owing to
their contact with corruption, they either are horrified at it and
grow gloomy, or else, out of lassitude, or some secret compromise,
espouse it. In fine, they necessarily become callous to every
sentiment, since man, his laws and his institutions, make them steal,
like jackals, from corpses that are still warm. At all hours the
financier is trampling on the living, the attorney on the dead, the
pleader on the conscience. Forced to be speaking without a rest, they
all substitute words for ideas, phrases for feelings, and their soul
becomes a larynx. Neither the great merchant, nor the judge, nor the
pleader preserves his sense of right; they feel no more, they apply
set rules that leave cases out of count. Borne along by their headlong
course, they are neither husbands nor fathers nor lovers; they glide
on sledges over the facts of life, and live at all times at the high
pressure conduced by business and the vast city. When they return to
their homes they are required to go to a ball, to the opera, into
society, where they can make clients, acquaintances, protectors. They
all eat to excess, play and keep vigil, and their faces become
bloated, flushed, and emaciated.

To this terrific expenditure of intellectual strength, to such
multifold moral contradictions, they oppose--not, indeed pleasure, it
would be too pale a contrast--but debauchery, a debauchery both secret
and alarming, for they have all means at their disposal, and fix the
morality of society. Their genuine stupidity lies hid beneath their
specialism. They know their business, but are ignorant of everything
which is outside it. So that to preserve their self-conceit they
question everything, are crudely and crookedly critical. They appear
to be sceptics and are in reality simpletons; they swamp their wits in