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The Baddington Peerage: who Won, and who Wore it
The Baddington Peerage who Won and who Wore it Author:George Augustus Sala Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 50 CHAP. XXXVIIL BEFOBE THE BALL. TN an upper chamber maison garnie, of that special street of furnished apartments, that Percy Street relique of Paris,... more » the Rue Louis- le-Grand, and about eleven at night on Mardi Gras, Philip Leslie and Doctor Ionides were dressing for the ball. It should with more rigid propriety be explained, that the Doctor had completed the preliminaries of his toilet in one apartment, while his friend had arrayed himself for the festin in another; but [their two bed-chambers were immediately contiguous, opened one upon the other, in fact; and the Doctor had left the inner, room and entered that of Philip, in order that the lattermight have an opportunity of criticising the splendour of his array previous to his putting the finishing touches thereto. Mr. Philip Leslie had never been at a masquerade in his life; and with settled obstinacy this singular young man pertinaciously refused to travesty himself in any way, even to the assuming of a domino, and persisted in dressing himself in a plain suit of evening black, which a regard for truth compels me to say became him remarkably well. With scorn he had contemplated the whole stock-in-trade of M. Raphael-ben-Daoud, costumier and mar- chant fripier of the Temple and the Rue de Seine, and had turned a deaf ear to the serpent who had striven to enchant him with the sight of gay and resplendent costumes— troubadours, pages, Louis Quinze marquises, Louis Treize cavaliers, men-at-arms, arque- busiers, and the like. He was not going to make a fool of himself, he said; so adhered to his evening suit of black—although I should be glad, by the way, to know if in the whole annal's of Folly's wardrobe there has even been made mention of a suit of attire more preposterously foolish than that same " evening dr...« less