A. “‘How is the bath perfumed?’ ‘Eau de mille fleurs.’ ‘Eau de mille fleurs! Did not I tell you last week that I was tired of that villainous compound? It has been adulterated till nothing remains but its name. Get me another bath immediately à la violette; and, Coridon, you may use that other scent, if there is any left, for the poodle; but observe, only when you take him an airing, not when he goes with me.’”
A. Excellent! I now feel the real merits of an exclusive; but you said something about dressing-room, or in-door philosophy.
B. I did; and now is a good opportunity to introduce it. Coridon goes into the ante-chamber to renew the bath, and of course your hero has met with a disappointment in not having the bath to his immediate pleasure. He must press his hands to his forehead. By-the-by, recollect that his forehead, when you describe it, must be high and white as snow: all aristocratical foreheads are—at least, are in a fashionable novel.
A. What! the women’s and all?
B. The heroine’s must be; the others you may lower as a contrast. But to resume with the philosophy. He strikes his forehead, lifts his eyes slowly up to the ceiling, and drops his right arm as slowly down by the side of the chaise longue; and then in a voice so low that it might have been considered a whisper, were it not for its clear and brilliant intonation, he exclaims—
A. Exclaims in a whisper!
B. To be sure; you exclaim mentally, why should you not in a whisper?
A. I perceive—your argument is unanswerable.
B. Stop a moment; it will run better thus:— “The Honourable Augustus Bouverie no sooner perceived himself alone, than he felt the dark shades of melancholy ascending and brooding over his mind, and enveloping his throbbing heart in their—their adamantine chains. Yielding to the overwhelming force, he thus exclaimed, ‘Such is life—we require but one flower, and we are offered noisome thousands—refused that we wish, we live in loathing of that not worthy to be received—mourners from our cradle to our grave, we utter the shrill cry at our birth, and we sink in oblivion with the faint, wail of terror. Why should we, then, ever commit the folly to be happy?’”
A. Hang me, but that’s a poser!