Page 325 - les-miserables

CHAPTER XII

M. BAMATABOIS’S

INACTIVITY

There is in all small towns, and there was at M. sur M. in
particular, a class of young men who nibble away an income
of fifteen hundred francs with the same air with which their
prototypes devour two hundred thousand francs a year in
Paris. These are beings of the great neuter species: impotent
men, parasites, cyphers, who have a little land, a little folly,
a little wit; who would be rustics in a drawing-room, and
who think themselves gentlemen in the dram-shop; who
say, ‘My fields, my peasants, my woods”; who hiss actresses
at the theatre to prove that they are persons of taste; quarrel
with the officers of the garrison to prove that they are men
of war; hunt, smoke, yawn, drink, smell of tobacco, play bil-
liards, stare at travellers as they descend from the diligence,
live at the cafe, dine at the inn, have a dog which eats the
bones under the table, and a mistress who eats the dishes
on the table; who stick at a sou, exaggerate the fashions, ad-
mire tragedy, despise women, wear out their old boots, copy
London through Paris, and Paris through the medium of

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