The Count of Monte Cristo

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of the opera, was explaining to him rather cleverly, since he was
obliged to be bold to appear at ease, his future projects, and the new
luxuries he meant to introduce to Parisian fashions with his hundred and
seventy-five thousand livres per annum.

The crowd moved to and fro in the rooms like an ebb and flow of
turquoises, rubies, emeralds, opals, and diamonds. As usual, the oldest
women were the most decorated, and the ugliest the most conspicuous. If
there was a beautiful lily, or a sweet rose, you had to search for it,
concealed in some corner behind a mother with a turban, or an aunt with
a bird of paradise.

At each moment, in the midst of the crowd, the buzzing, and the
laughter, the door-keeper's voice was heard announcing some name well
known in the financial department, respected in the army, or illustrious
in the literary world, and which was acknowledged by a slight movement
in the different groups. But for one whose privilege it was to agitate