Burlesques by William Makepeace Thackeray
page 79 of 560 (14%)
page 79 of 560 (14%)
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of the rest of the town, rang with the fame of her charms; and while the
dandies and the beauties were raving about her, or tearing her to pieces in May Fair, even Mrs. Dobbs (who had been to the pit of the "Hoperer" in a green turban and a crumpled yellow satin) talked about the great HAIRESS to her D. in Bloomsbury Square. Crowds went to Squab and Lynch's, in Long Acre, to examine the carriages building for her, so faultless, so splendid, so quiet, so odiously unostentatious and provokingly simple! Besides the ancestral services of argenterie and vaisselle plate, contained in a hundred and seventy-six plate-chests at Messrs. Childs', Rumble and Briggs prepared a gold service, and Garraway, of the Haymarket, a service of the Benvenuto Cellini pattern, which were the admiration of all London. Before a month it is a fact that the wretched haberdashers in the city exhibited the blue stocks, called "Heiress-killers, very chaste, two-and-six:" long before that, the monde had rushed to Madame Crinoline's, or sent couriers to Madame Marabou, at Paris, so as to have copies of her dresses; but, as the Mantuan bard observes, "Non cuivis contigit,"--every foot cannot accommodate itself to the chaussure of Cinderella. With all this splendor, this worship, this beauty; with these cheers following her, and these crowds at her feet, was Amethyst happy? Ah, no! It is not under the necklace the most brilliant that Briggs and Rumble can supply, it is not in Lynch's best cushioned chariot that the heart is most at ease. "Que je me ruinerai," says Fronsac in a letter to Bossuet, "si je savais ou acheter le bonheur!" With all her riches, with all her splendor, Amethyst was wretched--wretched, because lonely; wretched, because her loving heart |
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