cruel miasmas into stuffy back-kitchens where there is little air,
realize that, apart from this pestilence, the forty thousand houses of
this great city have their foundations in filth, which the powers that
be have not yet seriously attempted to enclose with mortar walls solid
enough to prevent even the most fetid mud from filtering through the
soil, poisoning the wells, and maintaining subterraneously to Lutetia
the tradition of her celebrated name. Half of Paris sleeps amidst the
putrid exhalations of courts and streets and sewers. But let us turn
to the vast saloons, gilded and airy; the hotels in their gardens,
the rich, indolent, happy moneyed world. There the faces are lined and
scarred with vanity. There nothing is real. To seek for pleasure is it
not to find _ennui_? People in society have at an early age warped their
nature. Having no occupation other than to wallow in pleasure, they
have speedily misused their sense, as the artisan has misused brandy.
Pleasure is of the nature of certain medical substances: in order to
obtain constantly the same effects the doses must be doubled, and death
or degradation is contained in the last. All the lower classes are on
their knees before the wealthy, and watch their tastes 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 i