"That's a nice country suiting. It expresses its purpose, suggests the right gaiety of mood. What says Arbiter elegantiarum?"
"Don't you think it might make the cart-horses shy?" says Ewing, and Paragot drops reluctantly the thunder-and-lightning check that has seized his unaccustomed fancy.
My wardrobe included a dress suit.
At Paragot's bidding, I donned it when it arrived, and on my way to him transfixed the Rue des Saladiers with awe and wonder. Upstairs, Paragot twirled me slowly round as if I were a mannequin on a pivot, and called Blanquette to admire, and uttered strange oaths in the dozen languages of which he was master. Was I not beautiful?
Blanquette admitted that I was. All that was most beautiful; without a doubt. I resembled the stylish people who went to expensive funerals. In fact, she added with a sigh, I was too beautiful.
She saw her brother Asticot transfigured into the resplendent gentleman beyond her sphere, and sighed womanlike at my apotheosis. She could no longer walk by my side, bareheaded, in the streets. The dress suit was a symbol of change detested by woman. She gave the matter however her practical attention.
"He ought to have patent-leather shoes," she observed.
"That's true," said Paragot, pulling his beard reflectively. "Ewing should have mentioned it; but I have noticed a singular lack of universality in the sons of English clergymen."
"And now my son," said he on the eve of my departure, "I too have the nostalgia of green fields and the smell of hay and manure and the fresh earth after rain. I have at last an inspiration. As this confounded ankle will not let me walk, I shall hire a donkey and let him take me whither he will. Narcisse shall accompany me."
"And Blanquette, will she trudge beside the donkey?"