The artist had always been disposed to raillery, a French preference for mingling ironic touches with the most serious sentiments.

Recognizing this, he invariably suffered an involuntary twinge of vainglory, the almost haughty yet well-concealed manners of a parvenu treated as an equal by princes and princesses

apparently quite as comfortable with badinage as with mourning

In his turn her husband spoke of his affairs, which he enjoyed revealing at dinner, this evening’s palaver being devoted to the chamber’s discussion of some newly proposed regulations against the adulteration of food.

smiles that were almost tender and satisfied, a familiar and officious gallantry

He would arrive spreading around him the exhilaration of his ride, a sort of matutinal breath of air

To feel out of his sphere, retired from life, like a super-annuated functionary whose career is finished: What intolerable torture.

The leading article was entitled “Modern Painting”: a dithyrambic panegyric of four or five young painters