noon
I have spoken to you as I feel , with all the fervor of my heart , although it may seem sport to you . You will be punished , for I shall not allow you to escape . I will take you to the France of other days . You shall dine with me at noon , and between this and then we will make the tour of those churches I have just named . During that time we will go back one hundred and fifty years in the past , into that world in which there were neither cosmopolites nor dilettantes . It is the old world , but it is hardy , and the proof is that it has endured ; while your society-look where it is after one hundred years in France , in Italy , in England -- thanks to that detestable Gladstone , of whom pride has made a second Nebuchadnezzar . It is like Russia , your society ; according to the only decent words of the obscene Diderot , ` rotten before mature ! '