they were necessarily the greater number),
affected the ideas and habits of the multi-millionaires, in order
that they might be classed among them. All passions which injured the
increase or the preservation of wealth, were regarded as dishonourable;
neither indolence, nor idleness, nor the taste for disinterested study,
nor love of the arts, nor, above all, extravagance, was ever forgiven;
pity was condemned as a dangerous weakness. Whilst every inclination
to licentiousness excited public reprobation, the violent and brutal
satisfaction of an appetite was, on the contrary, excused; violence, in
truth, was regarded as less injurious to morality, since it manifested
a form of social energy. The State was firmly based on two great public
virtues: respect for the rich and contempt for the poor. Feeble spirits
who were still moved by human suffering had no other resource than to
take refuge in a hypocrisy which it was impossible to blame, since
it contributed to the maintenance of order and the solidity of
institutions.

Thus, among the rich, all were devoted to their social order, or seemed
to be so; all gave good examples, if all did not follow them. Some felt
the gravity of their position cruelly; but they endured it either from
pride or from duty. Some attempted, in secret and by subterfuge, to
escape from it for a moment. One of these, Edward Martin, the President,
of the Steel Trust, sometimes dressed himself as a poor man, went: forth
to beg his bread, and allowed himself to be jostled by the passers-by.
One day, as he asked alms on a bridge, he engaged in a quarrel with a
real beggar, and filled with a fury of envy, he strangled him.

As they devoted their whole intelligence to business, they sought
no intellectual pleasures. The theatre, which had formerly been very
flourishing among them, was now reduced to pantomimes and comic dances.
Even the pieces in which women acted were given up; the taste for pretty
forms and brilliant toilettes had been lost; the somersaults of clowns
and the music of negroes were preferred above them, and what roused
enthusiasm was the sight of women upon the stage whose necks were
bedizened with diamonds, or processions carrying golden bars in triumph.
Ladies of wealth were as much compelled as the men to lead a respectable
life. According to a tendency common to all civilizations, public
feeling set them up as symbols; they were, by their austere
magnificence, to represent both the