Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/118

Rh should be a perpetual Kyrie Eleison; instead of which it is only a chorus of Offenbach's. Not that society anywhere, now, ever does rise higher than that; only here it jars on one more than elsewhere, and seems as profane as if one 'played ball with Homer's skull.'

"Floralia is a golden Ostensoir filled with great men's bones, and we choke it up with cigar ashes and champagne dregs. It cannot be helped, I suppose. The destiny of the age seems to be to profane all that have preceded it. It creates nothing—it desecrates everything. Society does not escape from the general influence; its kings are all kings of Brentford.

"Mila—who is here and happy as a bird—thinks Jack Cade and the Offenbach chorus the perfection of delight at all times.

"For myself, I confess, neither entertain me; I fail to see the charm of a drawing-room democracy décolleté and décousu; and I never did appreciate ladies who pass their lives in balancing themselves awkwardly on the bar of Dumas's famous Triangle; but that may be a prejudice—Mila says that it is.