(by Dr_Coulardeau on 18 August 2010)

The blue Carbuncle is another story entirely. Here Conan Doyle, Sir if you please Sir thank you, is settling his accounts with the aristocracy and at the same time with some mediocre intellectual, or what he calls an intellectual. The noble lady is a guano pack of macaroni in the middle of a three thousand old China service dish from some Chinese Emperor. She stinks and radiates high heavens her down-treading and forbidding hatred for those who are not at her entire service without asking the slightest question and for her no one is worth not serving her. Every instant of hers and her blue carbuncle, that was recently laid as an egg by a big Christmas poultry, become on the screen poisonous arrows thrown at this blind aristocracy that is not even selfish since for them there is no one else but them. How can they in anyway look down upon people who do not exist. Then you have the top servants of these aristocrats managing the service institution these noble people haunt. Those are selfish because they want to appropriate something that is not theirs but by having some innocent accused in their place. With these Sherlock Holmes is obnoxious with condescension. And finally there are the little honest ones Sherlock Holmes likes so much and the reward for the carbuncle will go to one of these though this reward is worth what they earn in ten or fifteen years. And they will go on working like every other day because working is their life and money is more a hindrance than a comfort.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID