at every moment I say: Cursed be the man who invented the
art of making common stuff precious by dyeing it scarlet! Cursed be the
costly robe that I stand in awe of! Where is my old, my humble, my
obliging piece of homespun?

"That is not all, my friend. Hearken to the ravages of luxury--of a
luxury that must needs be consistent with itself. My old gown was at one
with the things about me. A straw-bottomed chair, a wooden table, a deal
shelf that held a few books, and three or four engravings, dimmed by
smoke, without a frame, nailed at the four corners to the wall. Among
the engravings three or four casts in plaster were hung up; they formed,
with my old dressing-gown, the most harmonious indigence. All has become
discord. No more _ensemble_, no more unity, no more beauty.

"The woman who comes into the house of a widower, the minister who steps
into the place of a statesman in disgrace, the molinist bishop who gets
hold of the diocese of a jansenist bishop--none of these people cause
more trouble than the intruding scarlet has caused to me.

"I can bear without disgust the sight of a peasant-woman. The bit of
coarse canvas that covers her head, the hair falling about her cheeks,
the rags that only half cover her, the poor short skirt that goes no
more than half-way down her legs, the naked feet covered with mud--all
these things do not wound me; 'tis the image of a condition that I
respect, 'tis the sign and summary of a state that is inevitable, that
is woful, and that I pity with all my heart. But my gorge rises, and in
spite of the scented air that follows her, I turn my eyes from the
courtesan, whose fine lace head-gear and torn cuffs, white stockings and
worn-out shoes, show me the misery of the day in company with the
opulence of last night. Such would my house have been, if the imperious
scarlet had not forced all into harmony with itself. I had two
engravings that were not without merit, Poussin's Manna in the
Wilderness, and the same painter's Esther before Ahasuerus; the one is
driven out in shame by some old man of Rubens's, the Fall of the Manna
is scattered to the winds by a Storm of Vernet's. The old straw chair is
banished to the ante-room by a luxurious thing of morocco. Homer,
Virgil, Horace, Cicero, have been taken from their shelf and shut up in
a case of grand marqueterie work, an asylum worthier of them than of me.
The wooden table still held its ground, protected by a vast pile of
pamphlets and