Comes With Money [Flaubert]

From Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Trans. Geoffrey Wall.

Various men, a dozen or more, between the ages of twenty-five and forty, scattered among the dancers or talking in doorways, stood out from the crowd by a family likeness, despite the differences of age, dress or appearance.

Their coats looked better cut, of smoother cloth, and their hair, combed forward to curl at the temple, seemed to glisten with a superior pomade. They had the complexion that comes with money, the clear complexion that looks well against the whiteness of porcelain, the lustre of satin, the bloom on expensive furniture, and is best preserved by a moderate diet of exquisite foodstuffs. Their necks turned gracefully in their low cravats; their long whiskers flowed down over their collars; they wiped their lips on handkerchiefs embroidered with large initials, and deliciously scented. Those who were past their prime looked youthful, and even the faces of the young wore a certain maturity. In their coolly glancing eyes lingered the calm of passions habitually appeased; and, from beneath their polished ways, they exuded that peculiar brutality which comes from a too-casual supremacy in everything that demands strength and amuses one's vanity, the handling of race-horses and the company of fallen-women.