and watch their tastes in order to turn
them into vices and exploit them. Thus you see in these folk at an early
age tastes instead of passions, romantic fantasies and lukewarm loves.
There impotence reigns; there ideas have ceased--they have evaporated
together with energy amongst the affectations of the boudoir and the
cajolements of women. There are fledglings of forty, old doctors
of sixty years. The wealthy obtain in Paris ready-made wit and
science--formulated opinions which save them the need of having wit,
science, or opinion of their own. The irrationality of this world is
equaled by its weakness and its licentiousness. It is greedy of time
to the point of wasting it. Seek in it for affection as little as
for ideas. Its kisses conceal a profound indifference, its urbanity
a perpetual contempt. It has no other fashion of love. Flashes of wit
without profundity, a wealth of indiscretion, scandal, and above all,
commonplace. Such is the sum of its speech; but these happy fortunates
pretend that they do not meet to make and repeat maxims in the manner of
La Rochefoucauld as though there did not exist a mean, invented by the
eighteenth century, between a superfluity and absolute blank. If a few
men of character indulge in witticism, at once subtle and refined, they
are misunderstood; soon, tired of giving without receiving, they remain
at home, and leave fools to reign over their territory. This hollow
life, this perpetual expectation of a pleasure which never comes, this
permanent _ennui_ and emptiness of soul, heart, and mind, the lassitude
of the upper Parisian world, is reproduced on its features, and stamps
its parchment faces, its premature wrinkles, that physiognomy of the
wealthy upon which impotence has set its grimace, in which gold is
mirrored, and whence intelligence has fled.

Such a view of moral Paris proves that physical Paris could not be other
than it is. This coroneted town is like a queen, who, being always
with child, has desires of irresistible fury. Paris is the crown of the
world, a brain which perishes of genius and leads human civilization;
it is a great man, a perpetually creative artist, a politician with
second-sight who must of necessity have wrinkles on his forehead, the
vices of a great man, the fantasies of the artist, and the politician's
disillusions. Its physiognomy suggests the evolution of good and evil,
battle and victory; the moral combat of '89, the clarion calls of which
sti