“And so are you.” Fourth sort: You are seated at the fireside with an old friend; you stir up the embers and talk of—no matter what, for instance: “Would you like some tea? My cigar is out.” Or, what is better, you say nothing at all, and listen to the singing of the tea-kettle; all actions, which mean: “You are a good fellow, and would do me a service in case of need.”
Fifth sort: New general ideas and freely expressed; sort lost sight of these hundred years. It was known in the salons of the eighteenth century; genus to-day fossil.
Sixth, and last sort: Discharges of wit, fireworks of brilliant speeches, images struck out, colors displayed, profusion of animation, originality and gayety. A sort infinitely rare and diminished every day, by the fear of compromising one’s self, by the important air, by the affectation of morality.
These six sorts wanting—and they are evidently wanting—what remains? Conversation such as Henri Monnier paints, and M. Prudhomme makes. Only the manners here are better; for instance, we know that we ought to help ourselves last to soup, and first to salad; we are provided with certain proper phrases which we exchange for other proper phrases; we answer to an anticipated motion by an anticipated motion, after the fashion of the Chinese; we come to yawn inwardly and smile outwardly, in company and in state. This comedy of affectations and the commerce of ennui form the conversation at the springs and elsewhere.
Accordingly many people go to take the air in the streets.
II.
The street is full of downcast faces; lawyers, bankers, people tired with office work, or bored with having too much fortune and too little trouble. In the evening, they go to Frascati or watch the loungers who elbow each other among the shops on the course. During the day they drink and bathe a little, ride and smoke a good deal. The bloated patients, stretched on arm-chairs, digest their food; the lean study the newspapers; the young men talk with the ladies about the weather; the ladies are busy in rounding their petticoats aright: the old, who are critics and philosophers, take snuff, or look at the mountains with glasses, to ascertain if the engravings are exact. It is not worth the trouble of having so much money, merely to have so little pleasure.
This ennui proves that life resembles the opera; to be happy there, you must have money for your ticket, but, also, the sentiment of music. If the money is wanting, you remain outside in the rain among the boot-blacks; if you have no taste for music, you sleep sullenly in your superb box. I conclude that we must try to earn the four francs for the parterre, but above all to make ourselves acquainted with music.
The promenades are too neat and recall the Bois de Boulogne; here and there a tired broom leans against a tree its slanting silhouette. From the depths of a thicket the sergents de ville cast on you their eagle glance, and the dung decorates the alleys with its poetic heaps.
An invalid always brings with him one or more companions. Where is the being so disinherited by heaven as not to have a relation or friend who is bored? And where is the friend or relation so thankless as to refuse a service which is a pleasure party? The invalid drinks and bathes; the friend wears gaiters or rides, hence the species of tourists.