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Updated: June 18, 2025
He was a little, insignificant-looking man, and seemed annoyed, anxious to have done with it all. Then, among a group of frock-coated gentlemen, some of the spectators pointed out Gascogne, the Chief of the Detective Police, who wore a cold, official air, and Amadieu, the investigating magistrate, who smiled and looked very spruce, early though the hour was.
As loaders in that celestial chorus, I found about 400 frock-coated, top-hatted gentlemen from various parts of the world elderly diplomatists, ambassadors inured to the stifling atmosphere of courts, Foreign Ministers who had served their time of intrigue, professors who worshipped law, worthy officials primed with a stock of phrases about "the noble sentiments of justice and humanity," but reared in the deadening circle of uniforms, decorations, and insincere courtesy, having no more knowledge of the people's desires than of the people's bacon, and instructed to maintain the cause of peace chiefly by safeguarding their country's military interests.
Mary found it quite easy to identify the illustrious personages in the procession when once she had realized that they would, of course, not be in armor on a summer's afternoon, and at what even, to her inexperienced eyes, was manifestly a wedding. First to emerge was a group of the younger knights, frock-coated, silk-hatted, pale gray of waistcoat and gloves, white and effulgent of boutonnière.
A little later, moreover, came the employes, the clerks, the counter-jumpers, the whole world of frock-coated penury "gentlemen" who devoured a roll as they hastened onward, worried the while by the dread of being unable to pay their rent, or by the problem of providing food for wife and children until the end of the month should come.* And now the sun was fast ascending on the horizon, the whole army of ants was out and about, and the toilsome day had begun with its ceaseless display of courage, energy and suffering.
I picture him as a small spare man, with a slightly grizzled beard, and pleasant though shifty eyes behind a pince-nez. I picture him frock-coated, bowler-hatted, and evidently nervous. His wife I cannot at all imagine. An antique ruin has its privileges.
He threw himself at once into the thick of it all, paying no attention to the stout frock-coated gentlemen who sat on the platform, dealing out no compliments, whether to the audience or the speakers, wasting no time at all. He told them all that they had debts to pay, that their honour was at stake, and that Europe was watching them.
When the Baron spoke, his voice was not unlike the middle C of an old harpsichord whose wires long since had rusted and died. He was frock-coated like a clergyman or a park statue of a patriot. Of face, a Chaldean sire; of dress, a miniature apotheosis of the tailor's art; of form, a paleolithic child. "Blow me to a ice-cream cone? Gowann, Teenie, have a heart!"
It epitomized for him not merely the commonwealth of the present, huge as it was, but the whole historic past since the September day when Hendrik Hudson's Half Moon dropped anchor down yonder in the stream. He felt himself no more the successor of these frock-coated moderns whose oil presentments covered panelling and frieze than of the periwigs who ruled before them.
The second man went back to the pavement and resumed his study of the advertisement board, but a close observer might have seen that his eyes wandered past it now and again to the persons inside the office. Half an hour went by. Then the frock-coated man inside took a silk hat from a peg and placed it on his head. Simultaneously a woman went out.
The frock-coated young man was looking on with pale fear stamped upon his face; but the rest of the crowd were shouting advice and encouragement was being given to Beale. How I wondered, had he pacified the mob? I soon discovered.
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