And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit
This is incredibly similar to one interesting passage from Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illyich, another famous moralizing story:
but all this [affairs, immoral things] was done with such a tone of good breeding that no hard names could be applied to it. It all came under the heading of the French saying: Il faut que jeunesse se passe. It was all done with clean hands, in clean linen, with French phrases, and above all among people of the best society and consequently with the approval of people of rank.
This is incredibly similar to one interesting passage from Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illyich, another famous moralizing story: