Such a life she would have deemed
exquisitely happy; but the hard everyday world had no room for such
dreams. In this unromantic age Dion's daughter would be recognised within
twenty-four hours of her putting on male attire. The golden days of poetry
were dead. Una would find no lion to fawn at her feet. She would be mobbed
in the Strand.
"Oh, that it could have been!" thought Angela, as the coach jolted and
rumbled through the narrow ways, and shaved awkward corners with its
ponderous wheels, and got its horses entangled with other noble teams, to
the provocation of much ill-language from postillions, and flunkeys, and
linkmen, for it was dark when they came out of the theatre, and a thick
mist was rising from the river, and flambeaux were flaring up and down the
dim narrow thoroughfares.
"They light the streets better in Paris," complained Hyacinth. "In the Rue
de Touraine we had a lamp to every house."
"I like to see the links moving up and down," said Papillon; "'tis ever so
much prettier than lanterns that stand still--like that one at the corner."
She pointed to a small round lamp that made a bubble of light in an abyss
of gloom.
"Here the lamps stink more than they light," said Hyacinth.
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