How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with - oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! - the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal's iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!
Et voila ces maisons qui retentissent de divertissements ruineux dont personne ne s’amuse, voila le regne écrasant des protocoles, des modes, des prétentions et autres étalages, mais par-dessus tout voila la plus encombrante et la plus absurde des futilités : la sacro-sainte peur du qu’en-dira-t-on ! Regardez-les sombrer dans les plaisirs assommants, les luxes aliénants, les mille affectations qui, tel le carcan de fer réservé jadis aux criminels, enserrent et martyrisent la tete qui le porte !