Attached to these ladies were certain gentlemen who walked about in clouds of perfume, rose at midday, and supped at midnight.

Roderick had found himself in the mood for thinking them very amusing fellows.

He was surprised at his own taste, but he let it take its course.

It led him to the discovery that to live with ladies who expect you to present them with expensive bouquets, to ride with them in the Black Forest on well-looking horses, to come into their opera-boxes on nights when Patti sang and prices were consequent, to propose little light suppers at the Conversation House after the opera or drives by moonlight to the Castle, to be always arrayed and anointed, trinketed and gloved,--that to move in such society, we say, though it might be a privilege, was a privilege with a penalty attached.

But the tables made such things easy; half the Baden world lived by the tables.