den glow passed over his face. And what a warm
evening it was, too, on those Boulevards, blazing with electric lights,
fevered by a swarming, jostling throng, amid a ceaseless rumble of cabs
and omnibuses! It was all like a stream of ardent life flowing away into
the night, and Mathieu allowed himself to be carried on by the torrent,
whose hot breath, whose glow of passion, he ever felt sweeping over him.

Then, in a reverie, he pictured the day he had just spent. First he
was at the Beauchenes' in the morning, and saw the father and mother
standing, like accomplices who fully shared one another's views, beside
the sofa on which Maurice, their only son, lay dozing with a pale and
waxen face. The works must never be exposed to the danger of being
subdivided. Maurice alone must inherit all the millions which the
business might yield, so that he might become one of the princes of
industry. And therefore the husband hurried off to sin while the wife
closed her eyes. In this sense, in defiance of morality and health,
did the capitalist bourgeoisie, which had replaced the old nobility,
virtually re-establish the law of primogeniture. That law had been
abolished at the Revolution for the bourgeoisie's benefit; but now, also
for its own purposes, it revived it. Each family must have but one son.

Mathieu had reached this stage in his reflections when his thoughts were
diverted by several street hawkers who, in selling the last edition of
an evening print, announced a "drawing" of the lottery stock of some
enterprise launched by the Credit National. And then he suddenly
recalled the Moranges in their dining-room, and heard them recapitulate
their dream of making a big fortune as soon as the accountant should
have secured a post in one of the big banking establishments, where the
principals raise men of value to the highest posts. Those Moranges lived
in everlasting dread of seeing their daughter marry a needy petty clerk;
succumbing to that irresistible fever which, in a democracy ravaged by
political equality and economic inequality, impels every one to climb
higher up the social ladder. Envy consumed them at the thought of
the luxury of others; they plunged into debt in order that they might
imitate from afar the elegance of the upper class, and all their natural
honesty and good nature was poisoned by the insanity born of ambitious
pride. And here again but one child was permissible, lest they should
be embarrassed, delayed,