He went to Mass. But only, I think, because the observance of ritual is a form of the cultivation of beauty. In some ways, perhaps because of the wealth that had always surrounded him, he was an extremely innocent man. Self-denial was incomprehensible to him, unless it formed part of some aesthetic regimen. I stood with him once and watched a line of peasants labouring a turnip-field. A Millet brought to life. And his only remark was, “It is beautiful that they are they and that we are we.” For him even the most painful social confrontations and contrasts, which would have pricked the
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