The Ornamental Style

 The wine was red wine, and it had stained the ground in the narrow street in the suburb of San Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man that sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cast, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in, scrawled on a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees—blood.

-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Wine that is blood goes everywhere.

The wine was red wine, and it flowed through the streets that it was spilled in, in the suburb of Antoine, in Paris, France. The carpenter that was fashioning the stool, left a red stain on the legs; the woman carrying her baby, left a crimson mark on the baby’s forehead. The wine gushed everywhere, staining hands, foreheads, and everything in between. One old joker, more in than out of a raggedy nightcap, scrawled on the walls in muddy wine-see—blood.   

At the highest levels of our society, all is not well; several people have developed a sickness that no doctor can cure. The owners of businesses, the rich bureaucrats, and all others with excessive revenue streams have all been affected; their employees and constituents are suffering as a result. Only the people know how to cure it, and many wish to, but there is simply not enough effort being put towards it. At night the youth scrawl words on the walls. They scrawl the name of the sickness, the plague of wealth—greed.