A pretty assemblage, in sooth, for such an exhibition! Opposite, the box of an insolvent banker, the wife and the lover side by side in front, the husband in the shadow, neglected and grave. At one side the frequent combination of a mother who has married her daughter according to her (the mother's) own heart, and to make the man she loved her son-in-law. Contraband couples too, courtesans flaunting the price of their shame, diamonds in circlets of flame riveted around arms and necks like dog-collars, stuffing themselves with bonbons, which they swallowed in gluttonous, beastly fashion because an exhibition of the animal nature in woman pleases those who pay for it. And those groups of effeminate fops, with low collars and painted eyebrows, whose embroidered lawn shirts and white satin corsets aroused admiration in the guest chambers at Compiegne; _mignons_ of Agrippa's day, who called one another: "My heart," or "My dear love." Scandal and wickedness in every form, consciences sold or for sale, the vice of an epoch devoid of grandeur or originality, attempting to copy the freaks of all other epochs, and contributing to the Jardin Bullier that duchess, the wife of a minister of state, who rivalled the most shameless dancers of that resort. And they were the people who turned their back upon him, who cried out to him: "Begone! You are unworthy." "I unworthy! Why, I am worth a hundred times more than the whole of you, vile wretches! You reproach me with my millions. In God's name, who helped me squander them?--Look you, you cowardly, treacherous friend, hiding in the corner of your box your fat carcass like a sick pasha's! I made your fortune as well as my own in the days when we shared everything like brothers.--And you, sallow-faced marquis, I paid a hundred thousand francs at the club to prevent your being expelled in disgrace.--I covered you with jewels, you hussy, so letting people think you were my mistress, because that is good form in our circle, and never asked you for anything in return.--And you, brazen-faced journalist, with no other brains than the dregs of your inkstand, and with as many leprous spots on your conscience as your queen has on her skin, you consider that I didn't pay you what you were worth, and that's the secret of your insults.--Yes, yes, look at me, _canaille_! I am proud. I am better than you." All that he said thus to himself, in a frenzy of wrath, visible in the trembling of his thick, pallid lips, the unhappy man, upon whom madness was swooping down, was, perhaps, on the point of shouting aloud in the silence, of pouring out a flood of maledictions upon that insulting mob, and, who can say? of leaping down into the midst of them and killing some one, ah! God's blood! of killing some one, when he felt a light touch on his shoulder; and he saw a blond head, a frank, grave face, and two outstretched hands which he grasped convulsively, like a drowning man.