A feeling of extreme uneasiness began to ferment in all young hearts.  Condemned to inaction by the powers which governed the world, delivered to vulgar pedants of every kind, to idleness and to ennui, the youth saw the foaming billows which they had prepared to meet, subside.  All these gladiators glistening with oil felt in the bottom of their souls an insupportable wretchedness.  The richest became libertines; those of moderate fortune followed some profession and resigned themselves to the sword or to the church.  The poorest gave themselves up with cold enthusiasm to great thoughts, plunged into the frightful sea of aimless effort.  As human weakness seeks association and as men are gregarious by nature, politics became mingled with it.  There were struggles with the ‘garde du corps’ on the steps of the legislative assembly; at the theatre Talma wore a wig which made him resemble Caesar; every one flocked to the burial of a Liberal deputy.

But of the members of the two parties there was not one who, upon returning home, did not bitterly realize the emptiness of his life and the feebleness of his hands.

While life outside was so colorless and so mean, the inner life of society assumed a sombre aspect of silence; hypocrisy ruled in all departments of conduct; English ideas, combining gayety with devotion, had disappeared.  Perhaps Providence was already preparing new ways, perhaps the herald angel of future society was already sowing in the hearts of women the seeds of human independence.  But it is certain that a strange thing suddenly happened:  in all the salons of Paris the men passed on one side and the women on the other; and thus, the one clad in white like brides, and the other in black like orphans, began to take measure of one another with the eye.

Let us not be deceived:  that vestment of black which the men of our time wear is a terrible symbol; before coming to this, the armor must have fallen piece by piece and the embroidery flower by flower.  Human reason has overthrown all illusions; but it bears in itself sorrow, in order that it may be consoled.

The customs of students and artists, those customs so free, so beautiful, so full of youth, began to experience the universal change.  Men in taking leave of women whispered the word which wounds to the death:  contempt.  They plunged into the dissipation of wine and courtesans.  Students and artists did the same; love was treated as were glory and religion:  it was an old illusion.  The grisette, that woman so dreamy, so romantic, so tender, and so sweet in love, abandoned herself to the counting-house and to the shop.  She was poor and no one loved her; she needed gowns and hats and she sold herself.  Oh! misery! the young man who ought to love her, whom she loved, who used to take her to the woods of Verrieres and Romainville, to the dances on the lawn, to the suppers under the trees; he who used to talk with her as she sat near the lamp in the rear of the shop on the long winter evenings; he who shared her crust of bread moistened with the sweat of her brow, and her love at once sublime and poor; he, that same man, after abandoning her, finds her after a night of orgy, pale and leaden, forever lost, with hunger on her lips and prostitution in her heart.