10.
They enter a house; again the same sort of enormous, magnificent parlors. A party is in progress, full of gayety and joy. It is three hours since sunset; it is the very tide of joy. How bright the parlor is lighted! With what? no candelabra are to be seen anywhere, nor gas-jets. Akh! it is from here—in the rotunda of the hall is a great pane through which the light falls; of course it must be such—just like sunlight, white, bright, and soft; this is the electric light.[1] There are a thousand people in the hall, but there is room enough for thrice as many. "And there are thrice as many when they have company," says the radiant one, "and sometimes even more."
"What is it? Is it not a ball? Is it a mere every-day gathering?"
"Certainly."
At the present day this would have been a court ball, so bright, so magnificent are the costumes of the women. Yes, it is other times, as you can see by the cut of the dresses. There are some ladies in the dress of our time; but it is evident that they wear them for variety's sake, as a joke; yes, they are masquerading, making sport of this kind of dress. Others wear most varied costumes of different eastern and southern cuts, but all of them are more graceful than ours. But the predominating costume seems like the one worn by the Grecian women during the artistic age of Athens, very easy and comfortable; and the men also wear wide and flowing garments without waists,—something like mantles or cloaks,—evidently their every-day house-dress. But how tasteful and beautiful this dress! How soft and exquisitely it outlines the form! how it adds to the grace of the motions! And what an orchestra! There are more than a hundred musicians, both men and women; but above all what a choir!
"No, in all Europe in your day there were not ten such voices as you find here by the hundred, and in every other house it is the same. But the style of life is very different from that of old; it is very healthy, and at the same time very elegant, and therefore the chest becomes
- ↑ Here too Tchernuishevsky shows himself as a prophet. The electric light is now a fact. The day of aluminum is yet to come; when it comes, as come it will, the world will be revolutionized.
