The old straw chair is banished to the ante-room by a luxurious thing of morocco.

Homer, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, have been taken from their shelf and shut up in a case of grand marqueterie work, an asylum worthier of them than of me.
The wooden table still held its ground, protected by a vast pile of pamphlets and papers heaped pell-mell upon it; they seemed as if they would long protect it from its doom.

Yet one day that too was mastered by fate, and in spite of my idleness pamphlets and papers went to arrange themselves in the shelves of a costly bureau....

It was thus that the edifying retreat of the philosopher became transformed into the scandalous cabinet of the farmer-general.

Thus I too am insulting the national misery.
"Of my early mediocrity there remained only a list carpet.