There was no longer a question of those Emigrant hops at which we used to dance to the tune of the violin of a counsellor to the Breton Parliament; it was Almack's, conducted by Collinet, that provided my delight: a public ball under the patronage of the great ladies of the West End. There the old and the young dandies met. Among the old, shone the victor of Waterloo, who aired his glory like a snare for women stretched across the quadrilles; at the head of the young, stood out Lord Clanwilliam[170], said to be the son of the Duke of Richmond[171]. He did wonderful things: he galloped out to Richmond and returned to Almack's after twice falling from his horse. He had a certain manner of utterance, after the fashion of Alcibiades, which was thought enchanting. The fashions in words, the affectations of language and pronunciation changing, as they do, in almost every parliamentary session in high society in London, an honest man is wonder-struck at no longer knowing English, which he believed himself to know perfectly six months before. In 1822, the duty of the man of fashion was, at the first glance, to present an unhappy and ailing figure; he was expected to have something neglected about his person: long nails; beard worn neither full nor shaved, but seeming to have sprouted at a given moment by surprise, through forgetfulness, amid the preoccupations of despair; a waving lock of hair; a profound, sublime, wandering and fatal glance; lips contracted in scorn of the human race; a heart bored, Byronian, drowned in the disgust and mystery of existence. To-day it is no longer so: the dandy must have a conquering, thoughtless, insolent air; he must attend to his dress, wear mustachios or a beard cut round like Queen Elizabeth's ruff or the radiant disk of the sun; he reveals the lofty independence of his character by keeping his hat on his head, by lolling on the sofa, stretching out his boots before the noses of the ladies seated in admiration on chairs before him; he rides with a cane which he carries like a wax-taper, indifferent to the horse which chances to be between his legs. His health must be perfect and his soul always at the height of five or six felicities. A few Radical dandies, those most advanced towards the future, possess a pipe. But, no doubt, all these things are changed in the very time which I am taking to describe them. They say that the dandy of the present moment must no longer know if he exists, if the world is there, if there are women, and if he ought to salute his neighbour. Is it not curious to find the original of the dandy under Henry III.?