‘What do you want with money?’ she would say to me with an air of total simplicity, and I never argued the point. She fitted out her flat very nicely with the money, which did not stop her from saying when, later, she was showing me over the rooms of her new home.’ See what care and taste can do with the most scanty means.’ That ‘scantiness’ however, had cost me fifty thousand francs! With the remaining fifty thousand she purchased a carriage and horses. Also we gave a couple of balls, evening parties attended by Hortense, and Lisette and Cléopâtre women remarkable both for the number of their liaisons and (though only in some cases) for their good looks. At these gatherings I had to play the ridiculous role of host, to meet and entertain fat parvenu merchants, unbearable both in their rudeness and their boasting, colonels of various kinds, starving authors and journalistic hacks, all in fashionable tailcoats and pale yellow gloves and displaying such conceit and boastfulness as would be unthinkable even in St. Petersburg- and that’s saying a lot!
Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Gambler”, 1866
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 