And what point of contact could there possibly be between him and that bourgeois class which had gradually climbed to the top, taking advantage of every disaster to fill its pockets, stirring up every sort of trouble to command respect for its countless crimes and thefts.
After the aristocracy of birth, it was now the turn of the aristocracy of wealth, the caliphate of the counting house, the despotism of the Rue du Sentier, the tyranny of commerce with its narrow-minded, venal ideas, its selfish, rascally instincts.
Joris-Karl Huysmans
A Rebours (Against Nature)
