so little
good manners that one must be always severe with them. We live indeed in
an age of vulgarity. When they quarrel, they insult each other in
terms worthy of longshoremen, and, in our presence, they do not conduct
themselves even as well as our servants. It is at the seaside that you
see this most clearly. They are to be found there in battalions, and you
can judge them in the lump. Oh! what coarse beings they are!

Just imagine, in a train, a gentleman who looked well, as I thought at
first sight, thanks to his tailor, carefully took off his boots in order
to put on a pair of old shoes! Another, an old man who was probably some
wealthy upstart (these are the most ill-bred), while sitting opposite
to me, had the delicacy to place his two feet on the seat quite close to
me. This is a positive fact.

At the watering-places the vulgarity is unrestrained. I must here make
one admission--that my indignation is perhaps due to the fact that I
am not accustomed to associate, as a rule, with the sort of people one
comes across here, for I should be less shocked by their manners if
I had the opportunity of observing them oftener. In the office of the
hotel I was nearly thrown down by a young man who snatched the key over
my head. Another knocked against me so violently without begging my
pardon or lifting his hat, coming away from a ball at the Casino, that
it gave me a pain in the chest. It is the same way with all of them.
Watch them addressing ladies on the terrace; they scarcely ever bow.
They merely raise their hands to their headgear. But, indeed, as they
are all more or less bald, it is the best plan.

But what exasperates and disgusts me particularly is the liberty they
take of talking in public, without any kind of precaution, about the
most revolting adventures. When two men are together, they relate
to each other, in the broadest language and with the most abominable
comments really horrible stories, without caring in the slightest degree
whether a woman's ear is within reach of their voices. Yesterday, on the
beach, I was forced to leave the place where I was sitting in order not
to be any longer the involuntary confidante of an obscene anecdote, told
in such immodest language that I felt just as humiliated as indignant at
having heard it. Would not the most elementary good-breeding teach them
to speak in a lower tone about such matters when we are near at hand.
Etretat is, moreover, the country of gossip and