So he seated himself in the front of his box.  In the theatre the heat was suffocating in spite of the fans which were vigorously at work, throwing reflections from their bright spangles through the impalpable atmosphere of silence.  The house was listening religiously to an indignant and lofty denunciation of the scamps who occupied exalted positions, after having robbed their fellows in those depths from which they were sprung.  Certainly, Maranne when he wrote these fine lines had been far from having the Nabob in his mind.  But the public saw an allusion in them; and while a triple salvo of applause greeted the conclusion of the speech, all heads were turned towards the stage-box on the left with an indignant, openly offensive movement.  The poor wretch, pilloried in his own theatre!  A pillory which had cost him so dear!  This time he made no attempt to escape the insult, but settled himself resolutely in his seat, with arms folded, and braved the crowd that was staring at him—­those hundreds of faces raised in mockery, that virtuous tout Paris which had seized upon him as a scapegoat and was driving him into the wilderness, after having laden him with the burden of all its own crimes.

A pretty gang, truly, for a manifestation of that kind!  Opposite, the box of a bankrupt banker, the wife and her lover sitting next each other in the front row, the husband behind in the shadow, voluntarily inconspicuous and solemn.  Near them the frequent trio of a mother who has married her daughter in accordance with the personal inclination of her own heart, in order to make a son-in-law of her lover.  Then irregular households, courtesans exhibiting the price of shame, diamonds like circlets of fire riveted around arms and neck.  And those groups of emasculate youths, with their open collars and painted eyebrows, whose shirts of embroidered cambric and white satin corsets people used to admire in the guest-chambers at Compiegne; those mignons, of the time of Agrippa, calling each other among themselves:  “My heart—­My dear girl.”  An assemblage of all the scandals, all the turpitudes, consciences sold or for sale, the vice of an epoch devoid of greatness and without originality, intent on making trial of the caprices of every other age.

And these were the people who were insulting him and crying:  “Away with thee, thou art unworthy!”

“Unworthy—­I!  But my worth is a hundred times greater than that of any among you, wretches that you are!  You make my millions a reproach to me, but who has helped me to spend them?  Thou, cowardly and treacherous comrade, who hidest thy sick pasha-like obesity in the corner of thy stage-box!  I made thy fortune along with my own in the days when we shared all things in brotherly community.  Thou, pale marquis—­I paid a hundred thousand francs at the club in order to save thee from shameful expulsion!