w. He knew them almost all
by name--knew the amount of their fortune, and the secret history of
their life, his duties having made him a kind of directory of the
celebrities and the scandals of Paris.

Ladies rode past, slender, and sharply outlined in the dark cloth of
their habits, with that proud and unassailable air many women have on
horseback, and Duroy amused himself by murmuring the names, titles, and
qualities of the lovers whom they had had, or who were attributed to
them. Sometimes, instead of saying "Baron de Tanquelot," "Prince de la
Tour-Enguerrand," he murmured "Lesbian fashion, Louise Michot of the
Vaudeville, Rose Marquetin of the Opera."

The game greatly amused him, as if he had verified, beneath grave
outward appearances, the deep, eternal infamy of mankind, and as if this
had excited, rejoiced, and consoled him. Then he said aloud: "Set of
hypocrites!" and sought out with his eye the horsemen concerning whom
the worst tales were current. He saw many, suspected of cheating at
play, for whom their clubs were, at all events, their chief, their sole
source of livelihood, a suspicious one, at any rate. Others, very
celebrated, lived only, it was well known, on the income of their wives;
others, again, it was affirmed, on that of their mistresses. Many had
paid their debts, an honorable action, without it ever being guessed
whence the money had come--a very equivocal mystery. He saw financiers
whose immense fortune had had its origin in a theft, and who were
received everywhere, even in the most noble houses; then men so
respected that the lower middle-class took off their hats on their
passage, but whose shameless speculations in connection with great
national enterprises were a mystery for none of those really acquainted
with the inner side of things. All had a haughty look, a proud lip, an
insolent eye. Duroy still laughed, repeating: "A fine lot; a lot of
blackguards, of sharpers."

But a pretty little open carriage passed, drawn by two white ponies with
flowing manes and tails, and driven by a pretty fair girl, a well-known
courtesan, who had two grooms seated behind her. Duroy halted with a
desire to applaud this mushroom of love, who displayed so boldly at this
place and time set apart for aristocratic hypocrites the dashing luxury
earned between her sheets. He felt, perhaps vaguely, that there was
something in common between them--a tie of nature, that they were of the
same race, the same spiri