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The weather was fine, and the court was crowded with staff-officers and seigneurs, talking together in little groups, their dazzling uniforms and court-dresses brightening a spot which the marvels of architecture, then fresh and new, had already made so brilliant.
While negligently rolling his balls about he muttered these words: 'Do you ever see Bourrienne now? 'Yes, Sire, he sometimes dines with me on diplomatic reception-days, and he looks so droll in his old-fashioned court-dress, of Lyons manufacture, that you would laugh if you saw him. 'What does he say respecting the new regulation for the court-dresses? 'I confess he says it is very ridiculous; that it will have no other result than to enable the Lyons manufacturers to get rid of their old-fashioned goods; that forced innovations on the customs of a nation are never successful. 'Oh, that is always the way with Bourrienne; he is never pleased with anything. 'Certainly, Sire, he is apt to grumble; but he says what he thinks. 'Do you know, Duroc, he served me very well at Hamburg.
Most of them had on gold-embroidered court-dresses; some of them had military uniforms, and medals in abundance at the breast; and ladies also came, looking like heaps of lace and gauze in the carriages, but lightly shaking themselves into shape as they went up the steps.
If you express your regret at her recent indisposition, she will describe the exquisite robes de chambre which rendered her sufferings endurable. If you mention her brother, who has lately received an appointment near the person of the emperor, she will give you a minute account of the most approved court-dresses.
From the roof hung two immense chandeliers of stained glass and prisms, which with the flashing of innumerable gas-jets, lighting up gorgeous Court-dresses, and the most superb old diamonds of the realm, made up a scene of dazzling splendor, of enchantment, which people who were there go wild over to this day.
There was a chest of drawers against the wall, in which we found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned articles of a man's dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a hundred years ago by a gentleman of some rank costly steel buckles and buttons, like those yet worn in court-dresses, a handsome court sword in a waistcoat which had once been rich with gold-lace, but which was now blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of entertainment long since passed away.
One of these double knocks at Madame Mantalini's door, announced the equipage of some great lady or rather rich one, for there is occasionally a distinction between riches and greatness who had come with her daughter to approve of some court-dresses which had been a long time preparing, and upon whom Kate was deputed to wait, accompanied by Miss Knag, and officered of course by Madame Mantalini.
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