Note 348 — Chapter III · Literary and Artistic Mattoids.

“Have you ever noticed,” writes Daudet (Jack, ii. 58), speaking of mattoids, whom he called les ratés, “how these people seek each other in Paris, how they are attracted to each other, how they group themselves with their grievances, their demands, their idle and barren vanities? While, in reality, full of mutual contempt, they form a Mutual Admiration Society, outside which the world is a blank to them.”