this, again, on account of the lack of inhabitants. In
the country, there is no one to appreciate elegance, no one to be
astonished. Whatever adornments in the way of pictures and bronzes the
dweller in the country may procure for his house, whatever equipages and
toilets he may provide, there is no one to see them and envy them, and
the peasants cannot judge of them. [And, in the third place, luxury is
even disagreeable and dangerous in the country for the man possessed of a
conscience and fear. It is an awkward and delicate matter, in the
country, to have baths of milk, or to feed your puppies on it, when
directly beside you there are children who have no milk; it is an awkward
and delicate matter to build pavilions and gardens in the midst of people
who live in cots banked up with dung, which they have no means of
warming. In the country there is no one to keep the stupid peasants in
order, and in their lack of cultivation they might disarrange all this.]
{94}

And accordingly rich people congregate, and join themselves to other rich
people with similar requirements, in the city, where the gratification of
every luxurious taste is carefully protected by a numerous police force.
Well-rooted inhabitants of the city of this sort, are the governmental
officials; every description of artisan and professional man has sprung
up around them, and with them the wealthy join their forces. All that a
rich man has to do there is to take a fancy to a thing, and he can get
it. It is also more agreeable for a rich man to live there, because
there he can gratify his vanity; there is some one with whom he can vie
in luxury; there is some one to astonish, and there is some one to
outshine. But the principal reason why it is more comfortable in the
city for a rich man is that formerly, in the country, his luxury made him
awkward and uneasy; while now, on the contrary, it would be awkward for
him not to live luxuriously, not to live like all his peers around him.
That which seemed dreadful and awkward in the country, here appears to be
just as it should be. [Rich people congregate in the city; and there,
under the protection of the authorities, they calmly demand every thing
that is brought thither from the country. And the countryman is, in some
measure, compelled to go thither, where this uninterrupted festival of
the wealthy which demands all that is taken from him is in progress, in
order to feed upon the crumbs which fall f