all express and defend our opinions, you will quietly choose your own
among those that one must have, and then you need never trouble yourself
to think of anything more, never. You will only have to rest in that
opinion."

The young girl, without replying, turned upon him her mischievous eyes,
wherein sparkled youthful intelligence, restrained, but ready to escape.

But the Duchess and Musadieu, who played with ideas as one tosses a
ball, without perceiving that they continually exchanged the same ones,
protested in the name of thought and of human activity.

Then Bertin attempted to show how the intelligence of fashionable
people, even the brightest of them, is without value, foundation,
or weight; how slight is the basis of their beliefs, how feeble and
indifferent is their interest in intellectual things, how fickle and
questionable are their tastes.

Warmed by one of those spasms of indignation, half real, half assumed,
aroused at first by a desire to be eloquent, and urged on by the sudden
prompting of a clear judgment, ordinarily obscured by an easy-going
nature, he showed how those persons whose sole occupation in life is to
pay visits and dine in town find themselves becoming, by an irresistible
fatality, light and graceful but utterly trivial beings, vaguely
agitated by superficial cares, beliefs, and appetites.

He showed that none of that class has either depth, ardor, or sincerity;
that, their intellectual culture being slight and their erudition a
simple varnish, they must remain, in short, manikins who produce the
effect and make the gesture of the enlightened beings that they are not.