'The
Great Cacafogo,' Mrs. Botibol whispers, as she passes you by. 'A great
creature, Thumpenstrumpff, is at the instrument--the Hetman Platoff's
pianist, you know.'
To hear this Cacafogo and Thumpenstrumpff, a hundred people are gathered
together--a bevy of dowagers, stout or scraggy; a faint sprinkling of
misses; six moody-looking lords, perfectly meek and solemn; wonderful
foreign Counts, with bushy whiskers and yellow faces, and a great deal
of dubious jewellery; young dandies with slim waists and open necks, and
self-satisfied simpers, and flowers in their buttons; the old, stiff,
stout, bald-headed CONVERSAZIONE ROUES, whom You meet everywhere--who
never miss a night of this delicious enjoyment; the three last-caught
lions of the season--Higgs, the traveller, Biggs, the novelist, and
Toffey, who has come out so on the sugar question; Captain Flash, who is
invited on account of his pretty wife and Lord Ogleby, who goes wherever
she goes.
QUE SCAIS-JE? Who are the owners of all those showy scarfs and white
neckcloths?--Ask little Tom Prig, who is there in all his glory, knows
everybody, has a story about every one; and, as he trips home to his
lodgings in Jermyn Street, with his gibus-hat and his little glazed
pumps, thinks he is the fashionablest young fellow in town, and that he
really has passed a night of exquisite enjoyment.
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