Part I Chapter Nine
Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma''s eyes in
an atmosphere of vermilion. The many lives that stirred amid this
tumult were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct
pictures. Emma perceived only two or three that hid from her all
the rest, and in themselves represented all humanity. The world of
ambassadors moved over polished floors in drawing rooms lined with
mirrors, round oval tables covered with velvet and gold-fringed
cloths. There were dresses with trains, deep mysteries, anguish
hidden beneath smiles. Then came the society of the duchesses; all
were pale; all got up at four o''clock; the women, poor angels, wore
English point on their petticoats; and the men, unappreciated
geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to death at
pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Baden, and towards the
forties married heiresses. In the private rooms of restaurants,
where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed
the motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. They were
prodigal as kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. This
was an existence outside that of all others, between heaven and
earth, in the midst of storms, having something of the sublime. For
the rest of the world it was lost, with no particular place and as
if non-existent. The nearer things were, moreover, the more her
thoughts turned away from them. All her immediate surroundings, the
wearisome country, the middle-class imbeciles, the mediocrity of
existence, seemed to her exceptional, a peculiar chance that had
caught hold of her, while beyond stretched, as far as eye could
see, an immense land of joys and passions. She confused in her
desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart,
elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love, like
Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Signs
by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all
the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be
separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence,
from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled
flower-stands, a bed on a raised dias, nor from the flashing of
precious stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries.
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