Paul. How simple you are! In the matter of political positions, there is only the slightest shade of difference between the Conservatives and their opponents: the Conservatives ask for places and their opponents accept them. No, no, my child, this is the place where reputations are made and unmade and made over again; where, under the appearance of talking literature and art, Machiavellian conspirators hatch their schemes: this is the private entrance to the ministries, the antechamber of the Academies, the laboratory of success!
Jeanne. Heavens! What sort of circle is this?
Paul. It is the 1881 edition of the Hotel de Rambouillet: a section of society where everybody talks and poses, where pedantry masquerades as knowledge, sentimentality as sentiment, and preciosity as delicacy and refinement;—here no one ever dreams of saying what one thinks, and never believes what one says, where friendship is a matter of cold calculation, and chivalry and manners merely means to an end. It is where one swallows one’s tongue in the drawing-room just as one leaves one’s cane in the hallway: in short, Society where one learns the art of being serious!
Jeanne. I should say, the art of being bored!
Paul. Precisely!
Jeanne. But if everyone bores everyone else, what possible influence can it all have?
Paul. What influence? How simple you are! You ask what influence can boredom exert, here in this country? A great deal, I tell you. You see, the Frenchman has a horror of boredom amounting almost to veneration. Ennui is for him a terrible god whose worship is celebrated by good form. He recognizes nothing as serious unless it is in regulation dress. I don’t say that he practises what he preaches, but that is only a further reason for believing more firmly: he prefers believing to finding out for himself. I tell you, this nation, which is at bottom gay, despises itself for being so; it has forgotten its faith in the good common sense of its generous laughter; this sceptical and talkative nation believes in those who have little to say, this whole-hearted and amiable people allows itself to be imposed upon by pedantic false pride and the pretentious asininity of the pontiffs of the white dress necktie: in politics, in science, in art, in literature, in everything! These they scoff at, hate, flee as from a pestilence, yet they alone preserve for these things a secret admiration and perfect confidence! And you ask what influence has boredom? Ah, my dear girl, there are just two kinds of people in the world: those who don’t know how to bore themselves, and who are nobodies; and those who know how to bore themselves, and who are somebody—besides those who know how to bore others!
Jeanne. And this is the place you’ve brought me to!
Paul. Do you want to be a Prefect’s wife? Tell me?
Jeanne. Oh, to begin with, I could never——