The sale realized fifteen thousand francs, of which
five thousand were sunk in Hortense's clothes. And what was ten
thousand francs for the furniture of the young folks' apartment,
considering the demands of modern luxury? However, young Monsieur and
Madame Hulot, old Crevel, and the Comte de Forzheim made very handsome
presents, for the old soldier had set aside a sum for the purchase of
plate. Thanks to these contributions, even an exacting Parisian would
have been pleased with the rooms the young couple had taken in the Rue
Saint-Dominique, near the Invalides. Everything seemed in harmony with
their love, pure, honest, and sincere.
At last the great day dawned--for it was to be a great day not only
for Wenceslas and Hortense, but for old Hulot too. Madame Marneffe was
to give a house-warming in her new apartment the day after becoming
Hulot's mistress _en titre_, and after the marriage of the lovers.
Who but has once in his life been a guest at a wedding-ball? Every
reader can refer to his reminiscences, and will probably smile as he
calls up the images of all that company in their Sunday-best faces as
well as their finest frippery.
If any social event can prove the influence of environment, is it not
this? In fact, the Sunday-best mood of some reacts so effectually on
the rest that the men who are most accustomed to wearing full dress
look just like those to whom the party is a high festival, unique in
their life. And think too of the serious old men to whom such things
are so completely a matter of indifference, that they are wearing
their everyday black coats; the long-married men, whose faces betray
their sad experience of the life the young pair are but just entering
on; and the lighter elements, present as carbonic-acid gas is in
champagne; and the envious girls, the women absorbed in wondering if
their dress is a success, the poor relations whose parsimonious
"get-up" contrasts with that of the officials in uniform; and the
greedy ones, thinking only of the supper; and the gamblers, thinking
only of cards.
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