The great basket-chairs in the
portico were well filled by old and middle-aged gentlemen
engaged in enjoying the varied delights of liqueurs, cigars, and the
full moon which floated so serenely above the Thames. Here and
there a pretty woman on the arm of a cavalier in immaculate attire
swept her train as she turned to and fro in the promenade of the
terrace. Waiters and uniformed commissionaires and gold-braided
doorkeepers moved noiselessly about; at short intervals the chief
of the doorkeepers blew his shrill whistle and hansoms drove up
with tinkling bell to take away a pair of butterflies to some place
of amusement or boredom; occasionally a private carriage drawn
by expensive and self-conscious horses put the hansoms to shame
by its mere outward glory. It was a hot night, a night for the
summer woods, and save for the vehicles there was no rapid
movement of any kind. It seemed as though the world - the world,
that is to say, of the Grand Babylon - was fully engaged in the
solemn processes of digestion and small-talk. Even the long row of
the Embankment gas-lamps, stretching right and left, scarcely
trembled in the still, warm, caressing air. The stars overhead
looked down with many blinkings upon the enormous pile of the
Grand Babylon, and the moon regarded it with bland and
changeless face; what they thought of it and its inhabitants cannot,
unfortunately, be recorded.
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