"I wish to carry the experiment to its logical conclusion," answered the marquis. "The abbé Pirard contends that we are wrong in crushing the self-respect of the people whom we allow around us. _One can only lean on what resists_. The only thing against this man is his unknown face, apart from that he is a deaf mute." "If I am to know my way about," said Julien to himself. "I must write down the names of the persons whom I see come to the salon together with a few words on their character." He put at the head of the list five or six friends of the house who took every opportunity of paying court to him, believing that he was protected by a whim of the marquis. They were poor dull devils. But it must be said in praise of this class of men, such as they are found to-day in the salons of the aristocracy, that every one did not find them equally tame. One of them was now allowing himself to be bullied by the marquis, who was venting his irritation at a harsh remark which had been addressed to him by the marquise. The masters of the house were too proud or too prone to boredom; they were too much used to finding their only distraction in the addressing of insults, to enable them to expect true friends. But, except on rainy days and in rare moments of savage boredom, they always showed themselves perfectly polite. If the five or six toadies who manifested so paternal an affection towards Julien had deserted the Hotel de la Mole, the marquise would have been exposed to long spells of solitude, and in the eyes of women of that class, solitude is awful, it is the symbol of _disgrace_. The marquis was charming to his wife. He saw that her salon was sufficiently furnished, though not with peers, for he did not think his new colleagues were sufficiently noble to come to his house as friends, or sufficiently amusing to be admitted as inferiors. It was only later that Julien fathomed these secrets. The governing policy of a household, though it forms the staple of conversation in bourgeois families, is only alluded to in families of the class of that of the marquis in moments of distress. So paramount even in this bored century is the necessity of amusing one's self, that even on the days of dinner-parties the marquis had scarcely left the salon before all the guests ran away. Provided that one did not make any jests about either God or the priests or the king or the persons in office, or the artists who enjoyed the favour of the court, or of anything that was established, provided that one did not praise either Béranger or the opposition papers, or Voltaire or Rousseau or anything which involved any element of free speech, provided that above all that one never talked politics, one could discuss everything with freedom. There is no income of a hundred thousand crowns a year and no blue ribbon which could sustain a contest against such a code of salon etiquette.