in order to turn them into vices and exploit them. Thus you see in
these folk at an early age tastes instead of passions, romantic
fantasies and lukewarm loves. There impotence reigns; there ideas have
ceased--they have evaporated together with energy amongst the
affectations of the boudoir and the cajolements of women. There are
fledglings of forty, old doctors of sixty years. The wealthy obtain in
Paris ready-made wit and science--formulated opinions which save them
the need of having wit, science, or opinion of their own. The
irrationality of this world is equaled by its weakness and its
licentiousness. It is greedy of time to the point of wasting it. Seek
in it for affection as little as for ideas. Its kisses conceal a
profound indifference, its urbanity a perpetual contempt. It has no
other fashion of love. Flashes of wit without profundity, a wealth of
indiscretion, scandal, and above all, commonplace. Such is the sum of
its speech; but these happy fortunates pretend that they do not meet
to make and repeat maxims in the manner of La Rochefoucauld as though
there did not exist a mean, invented by the eighteenth century,
between a superfluity and absolute blank. If a few men of character
indulge in witticism, at once subtle and refined, they are
misunderstood; soon, tired of giving without receiving, they remain at
home, and leave fools to reign over their territory. This hollow life,
this perpetual expectation of a pleasure which never comes, this
permanent _ennui_ and emptiness of soul, heart, and mind, the
lassitude of the upper Parisian world, is reproduced on its features,
and stamps its parchment faces, its premature wrinkles, that
physiognomy of the wealthy upon which impotence has set its grimace,
in which gold is mirrored, and whence intelligence has fled.

Such a view of moral Paris proves that physical Paris could not be
other than it is. This coroneted town is like a queen, who, being