"de Balzac, Honore - Gaudissart 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Balzac Honore De)

accordingly appeared with three bracelets of marvelous workmanship.
The great ladies hesitated. Choice is a mental lightning flash;
hesitate--there is no more to be said, you are at fault. Inspiration
in matters of taste will not come twice. At last, after about ten
minutes the Prince was called in. He saw the two duchesses confronting
doubt with its thousand facets, unable to decide between the
transcendent merits of two of the trinkets, for the third had been set
aside at once. Without leaving his book, without a glance at the
bracelets, the Prince looked at the jeweler's assistant.

"Which would you choose for your sweetheart?" asked he.

The young man indicated one of the pair.

"In that case, take the other, you will make two women happy," said
the subtlest of modern diplomatists, "and make your sweetheart happy
too, in my name."

The two fair ladies smiled, and the young shopman took his departure,
delighted with the Prince's present and the implied compliment to his
taste.

A woman alights from her splendid carriage before one of the expensive
shops where shawls are sold in the Rue Vivienne. She is not alone;
women almost always go in pairs on these expeditions; always make the
round of half a score of shops before they make up their minds, and
laugh together in the intervals over the little comedies played for
their benefit. Let us see which of the two acts most in character--the
fair customer or the seller, and which has the best of it in such
miniature vaudevilles?

If you attempt to describe a sale, the central fact of Parisian trade,
you are in duty bound, if you attempt to give the gist of the matter,
to produce a type, and for this purpose a shawl or a chatelaine
costing some three thousand francs is a more exacting purchase than a
length of lawn or dress that costs three hundred. But know, oh foreign
visitors from the Old World and the New (if ever this study of the
physiology of the Invoice should be by you perused), that this
selfsame comedy is played in haberdashers' shops over a barege at two
francs or a printed muslin at four francs the yard.

And you, princess, or simple citizen's wife, whichever you may be, how
should you distrust that good-looking, very young man, with those
frank, innocent eyes, and a cheek like a peach covered with down? He
is dressed almost as well as your--cousin, let us say. His tones are
soft as the woolen stuffs which he spreads before you. There are three
or four more of his like. One has dark eyes, a decided expression, and
an imperial manner of saying, "This is what you wish"; another, that
blue-eyed youth, diffident of manner and meek of speech, prompts the
remark, "Poor boy! he was not born for business"; a third, with light