Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 28, 2025
Wax-lights, guttering down in gilded chandeliers, poured their mellow radiance round in multiplied profusion for mirrors made them infinite; crimson and gold were the rich prevailing tints in that wide and warm banqueting-room; gayly-coloured pictures, set in frames that Roger fancied massive gold, hung upon the walls at intervals; a wagon-load of silver was piled upon the sideboard; there blazed in the burnished grate such a fire as poverty might imagine on a frozen winter's night, but never can have thawed its blood beside: fruits, and wines, and costly glass were scattered in prodigal disorder on the board just now deserted of its noisy guests, who had crowded round a certain green table, where cards and heaps of sovereigns appeared to be mingled in a mass.
Herr Klesmer, who had been good-natured enough to seat himself at the piano, struck a thunderous chord but in the same instant, and before Hermione had put forth her foot, the movable panel, which was on a line with the piano, flew open on the right opposite the stage and disclosed the picture of the dead face and the fleeing figure, brought out in pale definiteness by the position of the wax-lights.
It was a glorious sight, and one can never forget it. The whole house was filled with generals and field-marshals: it was a grand field-day, by the glare of ten thousand wax-lights. And the Empress was there, and her whole suite, and all the prettiest women in France.
That house, whose clamorous knocker used to keep the neighborhood awake, is already reduced to utter stillness. The splendid apartments, brilliant with lustres and wax-lights, and crowded with company, are become a frightful solitude, terrifying to those to whom solitude has not one consolation or resource to offer. Poor Mrs.
York's, in a splendid saloon, illuminated with wax-lights in profusion, the floor crayoned with roses and myrtles, which the dancers' feet effaced, the walls hung with the most expensive hot-house flowers; in short, he was surrounded with luxury in all its extravagance. It is said that the peaches alone at this entertainment amounted to six hundred guineas.
The latter then led towards the gardens the major part of the beaux, the ladies and the chatterers, whilst the men walked in the gallery, lighted by three hundred wax-lights, in the sight of all; the admirers of fireworks all ran away towards the garden. Gourville approached Fouquet, and said: "Monsieur, we are here." "All!" said Fouquet. "Yes, count."
On the walls of blue velvet hung large Venetian mirrors, filling the room with images of that gorgeous bed of state. In the centre, on a marble table, thirty wax-lights in silver candelabra illumined the splendor of the scene.
His grandiose air was then so mixed with genuine kindliness that it only enriched his courtesies, like the "body" in mellow old wine. He leaned graciously back in the arm-chair peculiarly his own, surveying the long table shone over by soft wax-lights, and circled by smiling faces, most of them women, as the old gentleman liked best.
It seems a dream to her, that she who sits there now reeling yarn in her stuff petticoat and white short-gown is the same who took the arm of Colonel Burr amid the blaze of wax-lights and the sweep of silks and rustle of plumes.
You can mark clearly the expression of satisfaction which steals over every face as candle after candle of the stack of wax-lights before the altar is put out successively, at intervals of some twenty minutes.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking