These conditions, which a woman of that class calls being in luck, are
difficult to combine in Paris, although it is a city of millionaires,
of idlers, of used-up and capricious men.
Providence has, no doubt, vouchsafed protection to clerks and
middle-class citizens, for whom obstacles of this kind are at least
double in the sphere in which they move. At the same time, there are
enough Madame Marneffes in Paris to allow of our taking Valerie to
figure as a type in this picture of manners. Some of these women yield
to the double pressure of a genuine passion and of hard necessity, like
Madame Colleville, who was for long attached to one of the famous
orators of the left, Keller the banker. Others are spurred by vanity,
like Madame de la Baudraye, who remained almost respectable in spite
of her elopement with Lousteau. Some, again, are led astray by the
love of fine clothes, and some by the impossibility of keeping a house
going on obviously too narrow means. The stinginess of the State--or
of Parliament--leads to many disasters and to much corruption.
At the present moment the laboring classes are the fashionable object
of compassion; they are being murdered--it is said--by the
manufacturing capitalist; but the Government is a hundred times harder
than the meanest tradesman, it carries its economy in the article of
salaries to absolute folly.
Pages:
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238