me
little isle that should be so far a debatable land that he might abide
upon it. Clearly Couture was not in his proper place.

As for the fourth and most malicious personage, his name will be
enough--it was Bixiou! Not (alas!) the Bixiou of 1825, but the Bixiou
of 1836, a misanthropic buffoon, acknowledged supreme, by reason of his
energetic and caustic wit; a very fiend let loose now that he saw how
he had squandered his intellect in pure waste; a Bixiou vexed by the
thought that he had not come by his share of the wreckage in the last
Revolution; a Bixiou with a kick for every one, like Pierrot at the
Funambules. Bixiou had the whole history of his own times at his
finger-ends, more particularly its scandalous chronicle, embellished
by added waggeries of his own. He sprang like a clown upon everybody's
back, only to do his utmost to leave the executioner's brand upon every
pair of shoulders.

The first cravings of gluttony satisfied, our neighbors reached the
stage at which we also had arrived, to wit, the dessert; and, as we made
no sign, they believed that they were alone. Thanks to the champagne,
the talk grew confidential as they dallied with the dessert amid the
cigar smoke. Yet through it all you felt the influence of the icy
_esprit_ that leaves the most spontaneous feeling frost-bound and stiff,
that checks the most generous inspirations, and gives a sharp ring to
the laughter. Their table-talk was full of bitter irony which turns
a jest into a sneer; it told of the exhaustion of souls given over
to themselves; of lives with no end in view but the satisfaction of
self--of egoism induced by these times of peace in which we live. I can
think of nothing like it save a pamphlet against mankind at large which
Diderot was afraid to publish, a book that bares man's breast simply to
expose the plague-sores upon it. We listened to just such a pamphlet
as _Rameau's Nephew_, spoken aloud in all good faith, in the course of
after-dinner talk in which nothing, not even the point which the speaker
wished to carry, was sacred from epigram; nothing taken for granted,
nothing built up except on ruins, nothing reverenced save the sceptic's
adopted article of belief--the omnipotence, omniscience, and universal
applicability of money.

After some target practice at the outer circle of their acquaintances,
they turned their ill-natured shafts at their intimate friends. With a
sign I explained my wish to stay and listen as soo