They resemble, in fine, that pretty white spray
which crests the stormy waves. They dress and dance, dine and take
their pleasure, on the day of Waterloo, in the time of cholera or
revolution. Finally, their expenses are all the same, but here the
contrast comes in. Of this fluctuating fortune, so agreeably flung
away, some possess the capital for which the others wait; they have
the same tailors, but the bills of the latter are still to pay. Next,
if the first, like sieves, take in ideas of all kinds without
retaining any, the latter compare them and assimilate all the good. If
the first believe they know something, know nothing and understand
everything, lend all to those who need nothing and offer nothing to
those who are in need; the latter study secretly others' thoughts and
place out their money, like their follies, at big interest. The one
class have no more faithful impressions, because their soul, like a
mirror, worn from use, no longer reflects any image; the others
economize their senses and life, even while they seem, like the first,
to be flinging them away broadcast. The first, on the faith of a hope,
devote themselves without conviction to a system which has wind and
tide against it, but they leap upon another political craft when the
first goes adrift; the second take the measure of the future, sound
it, and see in political fidelity what the English see in commercial
integrity, an element of success. Where the young man of possessions
makes a pun or an epigram upon the restoration of the throne, he who
has nothing makes a public calculation or a secret reservation, and
obtains everything by giving a handshake to his friends.
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