The Girl With the Golden Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page B

embrace careers and follow them quite simply; they are a little like Rousseau’s Émile, an ordinary citizen through and through, and they never belong to society. Diplomats impolitely call them simpletons. Simpletons or not, they increase the number of those average people beneath whose weight France bends. They are always there; always ready to spoil public or private affairs with the flat trowel of mediocrity, boasting about their impotence, which they call manners and probity. These Good Conduct Medals infest the government, the army, the magistracy, the chambers, the court. They weaken, depress the country as it were, and form in the body politic a lymph that overburdens it and makes it flabby.These respectable individuals call talented people immoral, or rogues. Though these rogues get paid for their services, at least they serve; while the “respectable” people do nothing but harm, but are respected by the crowd. Fortunately for France, though, elegant youth firmly stigmatizes them with the name of “old fools.”
    Hence, at first glance, it is natural to regard the two kinds of young men who lead an elegant life—an enviable guild to which Henri de Marsay belonged—as quite distinct. But observers who do not stop at the surface of things are soon convinced that the differences are purely moral, and that nothing is so deceptive as their attractive shell. These young men all hasten to override everyone else; blather about things, people, literature, the fine arts; always have the “Pitt and Cobourg” of that year on the tips of their tongues; interrupt conversation with a pun; poke fun at science and scholars; scorn everything they don’t know or fear—then set themselves above everything, appointing themselves supreme judges of everything. All of them would willingly cheat their fathers, and would be ready to gush crocodile tears onto their mothers’ breast; but in fact they don’t believe in anything; they speak ill of women, or play at being chaste, actually all the while obeying an evil courtesan, or some old socialite. All of them are eaten away down to their very bones by calculation,depravity, by a brutal desire to succeed, and if they are in danger of suffering from the stone, if you examine them you will find each does have one, but in their hearts. In their normal state, they have the prettiest exteriors, swear on their friendship every other minute, and are thoroughly engaging. The same mockery dominates their ever-changing jargon; they aim for eccentricity in their appearance, revel in repeating the silly phrases of whatever actor is in vogue, and start out any new acquaintance with scorn or impertinence so that they can somehow score the first point in this game: But woe betide anyone who doesn’t know enough to let one of his eyes be gouged out so he can gouge out both of theirs! They seem just as indifferent to the misfortunes of their country as they are to its scourges. They are all like the pretty white foam that crowns waves in storms. They get dressed, dine, dance, have fun on the day of the Battle of Waterloo, during the cholera, or during a revolution. Finally, they all make the same expenditures; but here the difference begins. Of this fluctuating and pleasantly squandered fortune, some have the capital, and others are waiting for it; they have the same tailors, but the bills of the second kind of youth are yet to be settled. If some, like sieves, receive all kinds of ideas without keeping any of them, the second kind compare them and take allthe good ones for themselves. If the former think they know something, but actually know nothing and understand everything, lend everything to those who need nothing and offer nothing to those who need something, the latter secretly study the thoughts of other people, and invest their money as well as their whims at high interest. The former have ceased to receive true impressions, since their soul, like a mirror tarnished with use, no longer