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One day in November, the duke expressed a desire to imitate certain other royalties by examining the streets of the capital, and mixing with its humble citizens incog. To this end he sallied forth alone, and even condescended to take his dinner at Véfour's celebrated restaurant.
Then the return for dinner, as the lamps were being lighted along the boulevard, where people turned to look after the wedding-party, a typical well-to-do bourgeois wedding-party, as it drove up to the grand entrance at Vefour's with all the style the livery horses could command. Risler had reached that point in his dream.
His men were dreadfully discouraged; they had slept on the ground all night; they regretted their homes and their comfortable nightcaps in the Rue St. Honore: they had luckily fallen in with a flock of sheep and a drove of oxen at Tours the day before; but what were these, compared to the delicacies of Chevet's or three courses at Vefour's?
At once I saw in imagination the strong, heavy-jawed, greedy, flat Parisian face, the mercenary eyes, the paint and powder, the frizzed hair, and the nosegay of gaudy artificial flowers under the high-pointed hat, the polished nails like talons, the hideous crinoline.... I could fancy too one of our sons of the steppes running with pitiful eagerness after the doll put up for sale.... I could fancy him with clumsy coarseness and violent stammering, trying to imitate the manners of the waiters at Vefour's, mincing, flattering, wheedling ... and a feeling of loathing gained possession of me.... 'No, I thought, 'here Alice has no need to be jealous....
While the guests invited for the ball were arriving and mingling with the dinner-guests, while the orchestra was tuning up, while the cavaliers, eyeglass in position, strutted before the impatient, white-gowned damsels, the bridegroom, awed by so great a throng, had taken refuge with his friend Planus Sigismond Planus, cashier of the house of Fromont for thirty years in that little gallery decorated with flowers and hung with a paper representing shrubbery and clambering vines, which forms a sort of background of artificial verdure to Vefour's gilded salons.
The day was rainy, and the party did not keep its appointment; and after yawning through the interminable Palace picture-galleries, and then making an attempt to smoke a cigar in the Palace garden for which crime I was nearly run through the body by a rascally sentinel I was driven, perforce, into the great bleak lonely place before the Palace, with its roads branching off to all the towns in the world, which Louis and Napoleon once intended to conquer, and there enjoyed my favourite pursuit at leisure, and was meditating whether I should go back to "Vefour's" for dinner, or patronise my friend M. Duboux of the "Hotel des Reservoirs" who gives not only a good dinner, but as dear a one as heart can desire.
Then the return for dinner, as the lamps were being lighted along the boulevard, where people turned to look after the wedding-party, a typical well-to-do bourgeois wedding-party, as it drove up to the grand entrance at Vefour's with all the style the livery horses could command. Risler had reached that point in his dream.
It had begun at five o'clock in the morning, and at ten o'clock at night, exactly ten o'clock by Vefour's clock, he was still dreaming. How many things had happened during that day, and how vividly he remembered the most trivial details.
While the guests invited for the ball were arriving and mingling with the dinner-guests, while the orchestra was tuning up, while the cavaliers, eyeglass in position, strutted before the impatient, white-gowned damsels, the bridegroom, awed by so great a throng, had taken refuge with his friend Planus Sigismond Planus, cashier of the house of Fromont for thirty years in that little gallery decorated with flowers and hung with a paper representing shrubbery and clambering vines, which forms a sort of background of artificial verdure to Vefour's gilded salons.
As for Monsieur Chebe, who had recovered all his importance, it was impossible to induce him to go. Some one must be there to do the honors, deuce take it! And I assure you that the little man assumed the responsibility! He was flushed, lively, frolicsome, noisy, almost seditious. On the floor below he could be heard talking politics with Vefour's headwaiter, and making most audacious statements.
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