ontinually exchanged the same ones,
protested in the name of thought and of human activity.

Then Bertin attempted to show how the intelligence of fashionable
people, even the brightest of them, is without value, foundation,
or weight; how slight is the basis of their beliefs, how feeble and
indifferent is their interest in intellectual things, how fickle and
questionable are their tastes.

Warmed by one of those spasms of indignation, half real, half assumed,
aroused at first by a desire to be eloquent, and urged on by the sudden
prompting of a clear judgment, ordinarily obscured by an easy-going
nature, he showed how those persons whose sole occupation in life is to
pay visits and dine in town find themselves becoming, by an irresistible
fatality, light and graceful but utterly trivial beings, vaguely
agitated by superficial cares, beliefs, and appetites.

He showed that none of that class has either depth, ardor, or sincerity;
that, their intellectual culture being slight and their erudition a
simple varnish, they must remain, in short, manikins who produce the
effect and make the gesture of the enlightened beings that they are not.
He proved that, the frail roots of their instincts having been nourished
on conventionalities instead of realities, they love nothing sincerely,
that even the luxury of their existence is a satisfaction of vanity and
not the gratification of a refined bodily necessity, for usually their
table is indifferent, their wines are bad and very dear.

They live, as he said, beside everything, but see nothing and study
nothing; they are near science, of which they are ignorant; nature, at
which they do not know how to look; outside of true happiness, for they
are powerless to enjoy it; outside of the beauty of the world and the
beauty of art, of which they chatter without having really discovered
it, or even believing in it, for they are ignorant of the intoxication
of tasting the joys of life and of intelligence. They are incapable
of attaching themselves in anything to that degree that existence is
illumined by the happiness of comprehending it.

The Baron de Corbelle thought that it was his duty to come to the
defense of society. This he did with inconsistent and irrefutable
arguments, which melt before reason as snow before the fire, yet which
cannot be disproved--the absurd and triumphant arguments of a country
curate who would demonstrate the existence of God. In concluding, he
compared