Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury.

They had to be protected; and their horses, carriages, houses, servants had to be protected; and the source of their wealth had to be protected in the heart of the city and the heart of the country; the whole social order favourable to their hygienic idleness had to be protected against the shallow enviousness of unhygienic labour.

It had to--and Mr Verloc would have rubbed his hands with satisfaction had he not been constitutionally averse from every superfluous exertion.

His idleness was not hygienic, but it suited him very well.

He was in a manner devoted to it with a sort of inert fanaticism, or perhaps rather with a fanatical inertness.