useholds, courtesans exhibiting the price of shame, diamonds
like circlets of fire riveted around arms and neck. And those groups of
emasculate youths, with their open collars and painted eyebrows, whose
shirts of embroidered cambric and white satin corsets people used to
admire in the guest-chambers at Compiegne; those _mignons_, of the time
of Agrippa, calling each other among themselves: "My heart--My
dear girl." An assemblage of all the scandals, all the turpitudes,
consciences sold or for sale, the vice of an epoch devoid of greatness
and without originality, intent on making trial of the caprices of every
other age.

And these were the people who were insulting him and crying: "Away with
thee, thou art unworthy!"

"Unworthy--I! But my worth is a hundred times greater than that of any
among you, wretches that you are! You make my millions a reproach to
me, but who has helped me to spend them? Thou, cowardly and treacherous
comrade, who hidest thy sick pasha-like obesity in the corner of thy
stage-box! I made thy fortune along with my own in the days when we
shared all things in brotherly community. Thou, pale marquis--I paid a
hundred thousand francs at the club in order to save thee from shameful
expulsion!

"Thee I covered with jewels, hussy, letting thee pass for my mistress,
because that kind of thing makes a good impression in our world--but
without ever asking thee anything in return. And thou, brazen-faced
journalist, who for brain hast all the dirty sediment of thy inkstand,
and on thy conscience as many spots as thy queen has on her skin, thou
thinkest that I have not paid thee thy price and that is why thy insults
are heaped on me. Yes, yes; stare at me, you vermin! I am proud. My
worth is above yours."

All that he was thus saying to himself mentally, in an ungovernable
rage, visible in the quivering of his pale, thick lips. The unfortunate
man, who was nearly mad, was about perhaps to shout it aloud in the
silence, to denounce that insulting crowd--who knows?--to spring into
the midst of it, kill one of them--ah! kill _one_ of them--when he
felt a light tap on his shoulder, and a fair head came before his eyes,
serious and frank, two hands held out, which he grasped convulsively,
like a drowning man.

"Ah! dear friend, dear--" the poor man stammered. But he had not the
strength to say more. This emotion of joy coming suddenly in the midst
of his fury melted him into a sobbing torrent of tears, and