Quando non c’è più speranza nel futuro, il presente si colora di una spaventosa amarezza. - Émile Zola

In the midst of these fine gentlemen with their great names and their ancient traditions of respectability, the two women sat face to face, exchanging tender glances, triumphant and supreme in the tranquil abuse of their sex, and their open contempt for the male. And the gentlemen applauded them.

This sounded the death knell of small family businesses, soon to be followed by the disappearance of the individual entrepreneur, gobbled up one by one by the increasingly hungry ogre of capitalism, and drowned by the rising tide of large companies.

Sometimes, forcing themselves to hope, they sought to resume the burning dreams of other days, and were quite astonished to find they had no imagination.