d had nobody less in his mind than the Nabob. But
the audience saw in them an allusion to him; and while a triple salvo of
applause greeted the end of the tirade, all eyes were turned toward the
box on the left, with an indignant, openly insulting movement. The poor
wretch, pilloried in his own theatre! A pillory that had cost him so
dear! That time he did not seek to avoid the affront, but settled
himself resolutely on his seat, with folded arms, and defied that crowd,
which stared at him with its hundreds of upturned, sneering faces, that
virtuous All-Paris which took him for a scapegoat and drove him forth
after loading all its crimes upon him.

A pretty assemblage, in sooth, for such an exhibition! Opposite, the box
of an insolvent banker, the wife and the lover side by side in front,
the husband in the shadow, neglected and grave. At one side the frequent
combination of a mother who has married her daughter according to her
(the mother's) own heart, and to make the man she loved her son-in-law.
Contraband couples too, courtesans flaunting the price of their shame,
diamonds in circlets of flame riveted around arms and necks like
dog-collars, stuffing themselves with bonbons, which they swallowed in
gluttonous, beastly fashion because an exhibition of the animal nature
in woman pleases those who pay for it. And those groups of effeminate
fops, with low collars and painted eyebrows, whose embroidered lawn
shirts and white satin corsets aroused admiration in the guest chambers
at Compiegne; _mignons_ of Agrippa's day, who called one another: "My
heart," or "My dear love." Scandal and wickedness in every form,
consciences sold or for sale, the vice of an epoch devoid of grandeur or
originality, attempting to copy the freaks of all other epochs, and
contributing to the Jardin Bullier that duchess, the wife of a minister
of state, who rivalled the most shameless dancers of that resort. And
they were the people who turned their back upon him, who cried out to
him: "Begone! You are unworthy."

"I unworthy! Why, I am worth a hundred times more than the whole of you,
vile wretches! You reproach me with my millions. In God's name, who
helped me squander them?--Look you, you cowardly, treacherous friend,
hiding in the corner of your box your fat carcass like a sick pasha's! I
made your fortune as well as my own in the days when we shared
everything like brothers.--And you, sallow-faced marquis, I paid a
hundred thousand francs