"Do you know, my dear D'Harville," said M. de Lucenay, "that this house is one of the most elegant and best arranged in Paris?"
"It is very convenient, certainly, but we want room; I have a plan to add a gallery on the garden. Madame d'Harville wishes to give some grand balls, and our salons are not large enough. Then, I think, nothing is more inconvenient than the encroachments of fêtes on the apartments one usually occupies, and from which, on such occasions, you are necessarily driven."
"I am quite of D'Harville's opinion," said M. de Saint-Remy; "nothing is more wretched, more tradesmanlike, than these movings, compelled by the coming of balls and concerts. To give fêtes, really of the first class, without inconveniencing oneself, there must be devoted to their uses peculiar and special suites of apartments; and then vast and splendid rooms, devoted to a magnificent ball, ought to assume an appearance wholly distinct from that of ordinary salons. There is the same difference between these two sets of apartments as between a monumental fresco-painting and a sketch on a painter's easel."
"He is right," said M. d'Harville. "What a pity, gentlemen, that Saint-Remy has not twelve or fifteen hundred thousand livres a year! What wonders he would create for our admiration!"
"Since we have the happiness to possess a representative government," said the Duke de Lucenay, "the country ought to vote a million or two a year to Saint-Remy, and authorise him to represent in Paris the French taste and elegance, which should decide the taste and elegance of all Europe,—all the world."
"Adopted!" cried the guests in chorus.
"And we would raise these annual millions as compulsory taxes on those abominable misers, who, being possessors of colossal fortunes, should be marked down, accused, and convicted of living like gripe-farthings," added M. de Lucenay.
"And as such," added M. d'Harville, "condemned to defray those splendours which they ought to display."
"Not including that these functions of high priest, or, rather, grand master of elegance, which would devolve on Saint-Remy," continued M. de Lucenay, "would have, by imitation, an enormous influence on the general taste."
"He would be the type which all would seek to resemble."