forever impeded in the attainment of the future
they coveted.

A crowd of people now barred Mathieu's way, and he perceived that he
was near the theatre, where a first performance was taking place that
evening. It was a theatre where free farcical pieces were produced, and
on its walls were posted huge portraits of its "star," a carroty wench
with a long flat figure, destitute of all womanliness, and seemingly
symbolical of perversity. Passers-by stopped to gaze at the bills, the
vilest remarks were heard, and Mathieu remembered that the Seguins and
Santerre were inside the house, laughing at the piece, which was of so
filthy a nature that the spectators at the dress rehearsal, though they
were by no means over-nice in such matters, had expressed their disgust
by almost wrecking the auditorium. And while the Seguins were gloating
over this horror, yonder, at their house in the Avenue d'Antin, Celeste
had just put the children, Gaston and Lucie, to bed, and had then
hastily returned to the kitchen, where a friend, Madame Menoux, who kept
a little haberdasher's shop in the neighborhood, awaited her. Gaston,
having been given some wine to drink, was already asleep; but Lucie, who
again felt sick, lay shivering in her bed, not daring to call Celeste,
lest the servant, who did not like to be disturbed, should ill-treat
her. And, at two o'clock in the morning, after offering Santerre an
oyster supper at a night restaurant, the Seguins would come home, their
minds unhinged by the imbecile literature and art to which they had
taken for fashion's sake, vitiated yet more by the ignoble performance
they had witnessed, and the base society they had elbowed at supper.
They seemed to typify vice for vice's sake, elegant vice and pessimism
as a principle.

Indeed, when Mathieu tried to sum up his day, he found vice on every
side, in each of the spheres with which he had come in contact. And now
the examples he had witnessed filled him no longer with mere surprise;
they disturbed him, they shook his beliefs, they made him doubt
whether his notions of life, duty, and happiness might not after all be
inaccurate.

He stopped short and drew a long breath, seeking to drive away his
growing intoxication. He had passed the Grand Opera and was reaching
the crossway of the Rue Drouot. Perhaps his increase of fever was due
to those glowing Boulevards. The private rooms of the restaurants were
still ablaze, the cafes threw bright radiance acro