lives, even at an age when the most industrious of men will grant
themselves the right to rest. Their wives prided themselves on their
domestic skill. No dowry was given to the daughters. Rich men let their
sons in their turn go through the same hard apprenticeship that they
themselves had served. They practised strict economy in their daily
lives. But they made a noble use of their fortune in collecting works of
art, picture galleries, and in social work: they were forever giving
enormous sums, nearly always anonymously, to found charities and to
enrich the museums. They were a mixture of greatness and absurdity, both
of another age. This little world, for which the rest of the world
seemed not to exist--(although its members knew it thoroughly through
their business, and their distant relationships, and the long and
extended voyages which they forced their sons to take,)--this little
world, for which fame and celebrity in another land only were esteemed
from the moment when they were welcomed and recognized by
itself,--practised the severest discipline upon itself. Every member of
it kept a watch upon himself and upon the rest. The result of all this
was a collective conscience which masked all individual differences
(more marked than elsewhere among the robust personalities of the place)
under the veil of religious and moral uniformity. Everybody practised
it, everybody believed in it. Not a single soul doubted it or would
admit of doubt. It were impossible to know what took place in the depths
of souls which were the more hermetically sealed against prying eyes
inasmuch as they knew that they were surrounded by a narrow scrutiny,
and that every man took upon himself the right to examine into the
conscience of other men. It was said that even those who had left the
country and thought themselves emancipated--as soon as they set foot in
it again were dominated by the traditions, the habits, the atmosphere of
the town: even the most skeptical were at once forced to practise and to
believe. Not to believe would have seemed to them an offense against