ridiculously

From another point of view, it was a place without a soul. The well-to-do had hearts of stone; the rich were brutally bumptious; the Press, the Municipality, all the public men, were ridiculously, vaingloriously self-satisfied.

Thus, after eighteen months of fantastic and ruinous warfare, the companies had come to their senses and agreed to do what they might have done at the start; the only gainers were the passengers who had been carried at ridiculously uneconomic fares.