tinence, in order to have, as it were, the first move
in the game; but, woe betide him who does not know how to take a blow
on one cheek for the sake of rendering two. They resemble, in fine, that
pretty white spray which crests the stormy waves. They dress and dance,
dine and take their pleasure, on the day of Waterloo, in the time of
cholera or revolution. Finally, their expenses are all the same, but
here the contrast comes in. Of this fluctuating fortune, so agreeably
flung away, some possess the capital for which the others wait; they
have the same tailors, but the bills of the latter are still to pay.
Next, if the first, like sieves, take in ideas of all kinds without
retaining any, the latter compare them and assimilate all the good.
If the first believe they know something, know nothing and understand
everything, lend all to those who need nothing and offer nothing to
those who are in need; the latter study secretly others' thoughts and
place out their money, like their follies, at big interest. The one
class have no more faithful impressions, because their soul, like
a mirror, worn from use, no longer reflects any image; the others
economize their senses and life, even while they seem, like the first,
to be flinging them away broadcast. The first, on the faith of a hope,
devote themselves without conviction to a system which has wind and tide
against it, but they leap upon another political craft when the first
goes adrift; the second take the measure of the future, sound it, and
see in political fidelity what the English see in commercial integrity,
an element of success. Where the young man of possessions makes a pun or
an epigram upon the restoration of the throne, he who has nothing makes
a public calculation or a secret reservation, and obtains everything by
giving a handshake to his friends. The one deny every faculty to others,
look upon all their ideas as new, as though the world had been made
yesterday, they have unlimited confidence in themselves, and no crueler
enemy than those same selves. But the others are armed with an incessant
distrust of men, whom they estimate at their value, and are sufficiently
profound to have one thought beyond their friends, whom they exploit;
then of evenings, when they lay their heads on their pillows, they weigh
men as a miser weighs his gold pieces. The one are vexed at an aimless
impertinence, and allow themselves to be ridiculed by the diplomatic,
who make them dance