Page 70 - madame-bovary

the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the veneer of
old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite nur-
ture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their
low cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down
collars, they wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with em-
broidered initials that gave forth a subtle perfume. Those
who were beginning to grow old had an air of youth, while
there was something mature in the faces of the young. In
their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily sa-
tiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced
that peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy
things, in which force is exercised and vanity amused—the
management of thoroughbred horses and the society of
loose women.
A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was
talking of Italy with a pale young woman wearing a parure
of pearls.
They were praising the breadth of the columns of St.
Peter’s, Tivoly, Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the
roses of Genoa, the Coliseum by moonlight. With her other
ear Emma was listening to a conversation full of words she
did not understand. A circle gathered round a very young
man who the week before had beaten ‘Miss Arabella’ and
‘Romolus,’ and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in
England. One complained that his racehorses were growing
fat; another of the printers’ errors that had disfigured the
name of his horse.
The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were
growing dim.