is age," he exclaimed. "Your nineteenth
century is weak. It lacks excess. It ignores the rich, it ignores the
noble. In everything it is clean-shaven. Your third estate is insipid,
colorless, odorless, and shapeless. The dreams of your bourgeois who
set up, as they express it: a pretty boudoir freshly decorated, violet,
ebony and calico. Make way! Make way! the Sieur Curmudgeon is marrying
Mademoiselle Clutch-penny. Sumptuousness and splendor. A louis d'or has
been stuck to a candle. There's the epoch for you. My demand is that I
may flee from it beyond the Sarmatians. Ah! in 1787, I predict that all
was lost, from the day when I beheld the Duc de Rohan, Prince de Leon,
Duc de Chabot, Duc de Montbazon, Marquis de Sonbise, Vicomte de Thouars,
peer of France, go to Longchamps in a tapecu! That has borne its fruits.
In this century, men attend to business, they gamble on 'Change, they
win money, they are stingy. People take care of their surfaces and
varnish them; every one is dressed as though just out of a band-box,
washed, soaped, scraped, shaved, combed, waked, smoothed, rubbed,
brushed, cleaned on the outside, irreproachable, polished as a pebble,
discreet, neat, and at the same time, death of my life, in the depths of
their consciences they have dung-heaps and cesspools that are enough to
make a cow-herd who blows his nose in his fingers, recoil. I grant to
this age the device: 'Dirty Cleanliness.' Don't be vexed, Marius, give
me permission to speak; I say no evil of the people as you see, I am
always harping on your people, but do look favorably on my dealing a bit
of a slap to the bourgeoisie. I belong to it. He who loves well lashes
well. Thereupon, I say plainly, that now-a-days people marry, but that
they no longer know how to marry. Ah! it is true, I regret the grace
of the ancient manners. I regret everything about them, their elegance,
their chivalry, those courteous and delicate ways, that joyous luxury
which every one possessed, music forming part of the wedding, a symphony
above stairs, a beating of drums below stairs, the dances, the joyous
faces round the table, the fine-spun gallant compliments, the songs, the
fireworks, the frank laughter, the devil's own row, the huge knots of
ribbon. I regret the bride's garter. The bride's garter is cousin to the
girdle of Venus. On what does the war of Troy turn? On Helen's garter,
parbleu! Why did they fight, why did Diomed the divine break over
the head of Meriones