This sounded like a joke, but it was not.  To Society the Opera was a great state function, an exhibition of far more exclusiveness and magnificence than the Horse Show; and Society certainly had the right to say, for it owned the opera-house and ran it.  The real music-lovers who came, either stood up in the back, or sat in the fifth gallery, close to the ceiling, where the air was foul and hot.  How much Society cared about the play was sufficiently indicated by the fact that all of the operas were sung in foreign languages, and sung so carelessly that the few who understood the languages could make but little of the words.  Once there was a world-poet who devoted his life to trying to make the Opera an art; and in the battle with Society he all but starved to death.  Now, after half a century, his genius had triumphed, and Society consented to sit for hours in darkness and listen to the domestic disputes of German gods and goddesses.  But what Society really cared for was a play with beautiful costumes and scenery and dancing, and pretty songs to which one could listen while one talked; the story must be elemental and passionate, so that one could understand it in pantomime—­say the tragic love of a beautiful and noble-minded courtesan for a gallant young man of fashion.

Nearly every one who came to the Opera had a glass, by means of which he could bring each gorgeously-clad society dame close to him, and study her at leisure.  There were said to be two hundred million dollars’ worth of diamonds in New York, and those that were not in the stores were very apt to be at this show; for here was where they could accomplish the purpose for which they existed—­here was where all the world came to stare at them.  There were nine prominent Society women, who among them displayed five million dollars’ worth of jewels.  You would see stomachers which looked like a piece of a coat of mail, and were made wholly of blazing diamonds.  You would see emeralds and rubies and diamonds and pearls made in tiaras—­that is to say, imitation crowns and coronets—­and exhibited with a stout and solemn dowager for a pediment.  One of the Wallings had set this fashion, and now every one of importance wore them.  One lady to whom Montague was introduced made a speciality of pearls—­two black pearl ear-rings at forty thousand dollars, a string at three hundred thousand, a brooch of pink pearls at fifty thousand, and two necklaces at a quarter of a million each!

This incessant repetition of the prices of things came to seem very sordid; but Montague found that there was no getting away from it.  The people in Society who paid these prices affected to be above all such considerations, to be interested only in the beauty and artistic excellence of the things themselves; but one found that they always talked about the prices which other people had paid, and that somehow other people always knew what they had paid.  They took care also to see that the public and the newspapers