They were produced
by no vulgar means, but the motive was as vulgar as the art was great.
To surround his interior with a sort of invidious sanctity, to
tantalize society with a sense of exclusion, to make people believe
his house was different from every other, to impart to the face that
he presented to the world a cold originality-this was the ingenious
effort of the personage to whom Isabel had attributed a superior
morality. "He works with superior material," Ralph said to himself;
"it's rich abundance compared with his former resources." Ralph was
a clever man; but Ralph had never-to his own sense-been so clever as
when he observed, in petto, that under the guise of caring only for
intrinsic values Osmond lived exclusively for the world. Far from
being its master as he pretended to be, he was its very humble
servant, and the degree of its attention was his only measure of
success. He lived with his eye on it from morning till night, and
the world was so stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything he
did was pose-pose so subtly considered that if one were not on the
lookout one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who
lived so much in the land of consideration.
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