Page 1059 - les-miserables

It was this little high society which invented at the Tu-
ileries the refinement of speaking to the King in private as
the King, in the third person, and never as Your Majesty,
the designation of Your Majesty having been ‘soiled by the
usurper.’
Men and deeds were brought to judgment there. They
jeered at the age, which released them from the necessity of
understanding it. They abetted each other in amazement.
They communicated to each other that modicum of light
which they possessed. Methuselah bestowed information
on Epimenides. The deaf man made the blind man ac-
quainted with the course of things. They declared that the
time which had elasped since Coblentz had not existed. In
the same manner that Louis XVIII. was by the grace of God,
in the five and twentieth year of his reign, the emigrants
were, by rights, in the five and twentieth year of their ado-
lescence.
All was harmonious; nothing was too much alive; speech
hardly amounted to a breath; the newspapers, agreeing
with the salons, seemed a papyrus. There were some young
people, but they were rather dead. The liveries in the ante-
chamber were antiquated. These utterly obsolete personages
were served by domestics of the same stamp.
They all had the air of having lived a long time ago, and
of obstinately resisting the sepulchre. Nearly the whole
dictionary consisted of Conserver, Conservation, Conser-
vateur; to be in good odor,— that was the point. There are,
in fact, aromatics in the opinions of these venerable groups,
and their ideas smelled of it. It was a mummified society.

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