Nobody ever sees when the vote is taken; there never is a formal vote.  The women settle it mostly; and they know wonderfully well what is presentable, and what can’t stand the blaze of the chandeliers and the critical eye and ear of people trained to know a staring shade in a ribbon, a false light in a jewel, an ill-bred tone, an angular movement, everything that betrays a coarse fibre and cheap training.  As a general thing, you do not get elegance short of two or three removes from the soil, out of which our best blood doubtless comes,—­quite as good, no doubt, as if it came from those old prize-fighters with iron pots on their heads, to whom some great people are so fond of tracing their descent through a line of small artisans and petty shopkeepers whose veins have held base fluid enough to fill the Cloaca Maxima!

Does not money go everywhere?—­said the Model.

Almost.  And with good reason.  For though there are numerous exceptions, rich people are, as I said, commonly altogether the most agreeable companions.  The influence of a fine house, graceful furniture, good libraries, well-ordered tables, trim servants, and, above all, a position so secure that one becomes unconscious of it, gives a harmony and refinement to the character and manners which we feel, even if we cannot explain their charm.  Yet we can get at the reason of it by thinking a little.

All these appliances are to shield the sensibility from disagreeable contacts, and to soothe it by varied natural and artificial influences.  In this way the mind, the taste, the feelings, grow delicate, just as the hands grow white and soft when saved from toil and incased in soft gloves.  The whole nature becomes subdued into suavity.  I confess I like the quality-ladies better than the common kind even of literary ones.  They haven’t read the last book, perhaps, but they attend better to you when you are talking to them.  If they are never learned, they make up for it in tact and elegance.  Besides, I think, on the whole, there is less self-assertion in diamonds than in dogmas.  I don’t know where you will find a sweeter portrait of humility than in Esther, the poor play-girl of King Ahasuerus; yet Esther put on her royal apparel when she went before her lord.  I have no doubt she was a more gracious and agreeable person than Deborah, who judged the people and wrote the story of Sisera.  The wisest woman you talk with is ignorant of something that you know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance.

Dowdyism is clearly an expression of imperfect vitality.  The highest fashion is intensely alive,—­not alive necessarily to the truest and best things, but with its blood tingling, as it were, in all its extremities and to the farthest point of its surface, so that the feather in its bonnet is as fresh as the crest of a fighting-cock, and the rosette on its slipper as clean-cut and pimpant (pronounce it English fashion,—­it is a good word) as a dahlia.  As a general rule, that society where flattery is acted is much more agreeable than that where it is spoken.  Don’t you see why?  Attention and deference don’t require you to make fine speeches expressing your sense of unworthiness (lies) and returning all the compliments paid you.  This is one reason.