Emblem of the doom of wealth! He flies across
Paris like a rocket, and reaches the peristyle of the Theatre Favart.
The passers-by make way for him; the two footmen help him to alight,
an envious crowd looking on the while.
"What has that fellow done to be so rich?" asks a poor law-student,
who cannot listen to the magical music of Rossini for lack of a
five-franc piece.
Raphael walked slowly along the gangway; he expected no enjoyment from
these pleasures he had once coveted so eagerly. In the interval before
the second act of Semiramide he walked up and down in the lobby, and
along the corridors, leaving his box, which he had not yet entered, to
look after itself. The instinct of property was dead within him
already. Like all invalids, he thought of nothing but his own
sufferings. He was leaning against the chimney-piece in the greenroom.
A group had gathered about it of dandies, young and old, of ministers,
of peers without peerages, and peerages without peers, for so the
Revolution of July had ordered matters. Among a host of adventurers
and journalists, in fact, Raphael beheld a strange, unearthly figure a
few paces away among the crowd. He went towards this grotesque object
to see it better, half-closing his eyes with exceeding
superciliousness.
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