Yet his spirit
responded at once to the splendor and the call of a gayer and more
gorgeous society than any he had ever known. Wealth and great houses
existed even then in New York and upon occasion their owners made full
use of both, but there was a restraint about the Americans, the English
and the Dutch. Their display was often heavy and always decorous, and in
Quebec he felt for the first time the heedless gayety of the French,
when the Bourbon monarchy had passed its full bloom, and already was in
its brilliant decay. Truly, they could have carved over the doorway,
"Leave all fear and sorrow behind, ye who enter here."
There were lights everywhere, flaming from tall silver candlesticks, and
uniforms, mostly in white and silver, or white with black or violet
facings, were thick in the rooms. Ladies, too, were present, in silk or
satin billowing in many a fold, their powdered hair rolled high in the
style made fashionable by Madame Jeanne Poisson de Pompadour. From an
inner room came the music of a band softly playing French songs or airs
from the Florentine opera.
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