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Luxury – Gluttony: Two of the Seven Cardinal Sins
Luxury--Gluttony: Two of the Seven Cardinal Sins
MADELEINE
LUXURY
CHAPTER I
The palace of the Élysée-Bourbon, — the old hôtel of the Marquise de Pompadour, — situated in the middle of the Faubourg St. Honoré, was, previous to the last revolution, furnished, as every one knows, for the occupancy of foreign royal highnesses, — Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Mussulman, from the princes of the German confederation to Ibrahim Pacha.
About the end of the month of July, in a year long past, at eleven o'clock in the morning, several young secretaries and gentlemen belonging to the retinue of his Royal Highness, the Archduke Leopold Maximilian, who had occupied the Élysée for six weeks, met in one of the official parlours of the palace.
"The review on the Field of Mars in honour of his Royal Highness is prolonged," remarked one of the company. "The audience of the prince will be crowded this morning."
"The fact is," replied another, "five or six persons have already been waiting a half-hour, and monseigneur, in his rigorous military punctuality, will regret this enforced delay."
Then one of the doors opened; a young man not more than twenty years old at most, a guest of the house, crossed the parlour, and entered an adjoining chamber, after having saluted, with mingled kindness and embarrassment, the speakers, who rose upon seeing him, thus testifying a deference which seemed unwarranted by his age and position.
When he had disappeared, one of the gentlemen, alluding to him, said:
"Poor Count Frantz, always so timid! A young girl of fifteen, just out of the convent, would have more assurance! To look at him, who would believe him capable of such rare bravery, and that, too, for three years in the Caucasus war? And that he came so valiantly and brilliantly out of that duel forced on him in Vienna? I, gentlemen, picture to myself Count Frantz modestly dropping his eyes as he gave the Circassians a thrust of his sword."
"Besides, I believe that his Royal Highness makes a decided convenience of the ingenuousness of his son — "
"The devil! No indiscretion, dear sir!"