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The shops were filled with the crisp, fresh-tinted goods of the nearing season, and here and there among the smartly dressed women was a modish straw hat brightening the winter furs and velvets. Patricia's cup was full and running over.
The rooms, enormously high, panelled here and there in tattered velvets and brocades, or frescoed in fast-fading scenes of old Venetian life, stretched in bewildering succession on either side of a central passage or broad corridor, all of them leading at last on the northern side to a vast hall painted in architectural perspective by the pupils of Tiepolo, and overarched by a ceiling in which the master himself had massed a multitude of forms equal to Rubens in variety and facility of design, expressed in a thin trenchancy of style.
The silky, curly white Tibetan goat, and the thick, straight white fur of the psetz, make beautiful evening wraps for women, under velvets of delicate hues, and are used by day also, though they are attended by the inconvenience of requiring frequent cleaning. Cloth or velvet is the proper covering for all furs, and the colors worn for driving are often gay or light.
Marie Antoinette flitted from one treasure to another; her white hands at one moment deriving new beauty from the dark velvets upon which they rested; at another, looking lovelier than ever, as they toyed with the transparent laces. There was nothing queenly about her now. She was merely a charming woman, anxious to outshine all other women in the eyes of one man.
The few old-established inhabitants of the neighbourhood, mostly sons of the soil, who attended the village church, were very plain in their raiment, knowing that they occupied a position in the general regard which no finery of velvets or satins could modify.
"It is," said the beautiful lady. "Then God bless your pretty eyes," said the fisherman. Then the magician kissed the beautiful lady, and, beckoning to the fisherman, left the throne-room the same way that they had come. The noblemen, in silks and satins and velvets, marched ahead, and back they went through the other apartments, until at last they came to the door.
And Nina loved nothing better than to torture the poor women who were stinted of pocket-money with the sight of shimmering satins, soft radiating plushes, rich velvets, embroidery studded with real gems, pieces of costly old lace, priceless scents, and articles of bijouterie; she loved also to dazzle the eyes and bewilder the brains of young girls, whose finest toilet was a garb of simplest white stuff unadorned save by a cluster of natural blossoms, and to send them away sick at heart, pining for they knew not what, dissatisfied with everything, and grumbling at fate for not permitting them to deck themselves in such marvelous "arrangements" of costume as those possessed by the happy, the fortunate future Countess Oliva.
Proclamation has gone forth: "Velvets must go up, and homespun must come down;" and the question is "How does the coat fit?" not, "Who wears it?" The power that bears the tides of excited population up and down our streets, and rocks the world of commerce, and thrills all nations, Transatlantic and Cisatlantic, is clothes.
I'm afear'd we shall find him a sad jackanapes. Jem Hathaway, the gauger, told me last market-day that he saw him one Sunday in the what-dye-call't the Park there, covered with rings, and gold chains, and fine velvets all green and gold, like our great peacock. Well! we shall soon see. He comes to-night, you say?
It is but lately that a young woman said to me, "I thank Heaven, my dear doctor, that you are a woman; for now I can tell you the truth about my health. It is not my body that is sick, but my heart. These flounces and velvets cover a body that is sold, sold legally to a man who could pay my father's debts." Oh! I scorn men, sometimes from the bottom of my heart.
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