Diary of a Yuppie by Louis Auchincloss Page B

studded with opals!"
    "Is your god so different, Mr. Service?"
    "Do you ask that because I'm a lawyer?"
    "Let's just say I ask it."
    "I don't suppose I really have a god. Have you?"
    "I'm perfectly prepared to have any god who can convince me he is one."
    "But he hasn't so far?"
    She didn't answer me, but continued her tour of the cases.
    On the way downtown in the taxi we became more personal. She told me that she was a widow and lived with her ten-year-old son in an apartment on East Ninety-fourth Street. I informed her in turn of the state of my marriage. When we arrived at her house, she paused for a moment before getting out, apparently considering something. Then, with her hand on the door she said abruptly:
    "I'm dining tonight with a friend of mine, Ethelinda Low. Perhaps you've heard of her? She's a kind of Mrs. New York. She always lets me bring a man. Would you care to come?"
    "I'd like to very much."
    "Good. Pick me up at eight. Black tie."
    She told me about our hostess later, in the cab on our way to the party. Mrs. Low, like Odette in
Swann
, of obscure, indeed, unfathomable social origin, had started her career more or less as a kept woman and then had married, first, a restaurateur, second, a Brooklyn contractor, and finally, twice widowed, old Sidney Low of railroad fame. She was a woman of colossal energy who had brought to the management of the great fortune that her third husband had bequeathed outright to her a mind, in someone's phrase, "unclouded by the usual American fetishes about the spending of money acquired by sweat, will or altar." According to Sylvia, she had earned the total respect and even admiration of New York society.
    We found our hostess standing by the doorway of her living room, formally receiving her guests. Gray-haired and brown-skinned, but very tall and straight and endowed with the most serene blue eyes I had ever seen, Mrs. Low in no way suggested her beginnings. She had converted such youthful spirits as might have been needed in earlier days to an almost awesome respectability. Yet at the same time she impressed me as a person who had no desire to appear as anything than what she evidently now was: a wise, rich, sensible, down-to-earth woman. I was later to learn that all of her stepchildren and step-grandchildren had fallen utterly under her spell and visited her submissively to be berated for their follies or approved for their good conduct, like the descendants of Louis XIV with his formidable morganatic spouse, Madame de Maintenon.
    My hostess waited until Sylvia, who had greeted her with a quick kiss, had moved out of hearing, and then addressed me with a grave candor.
    "It's not usual for Sylvia to ask to bring a man. You should be much complimented."
    "Oh, but I am!"
    "Well, I hope you're as nice as you look. Because I want somebody nice for Sylvia. She's had a hard time, that child. And she deserves a prince charming."
    "Well, I can't claim to be a prince."
    "But you'll provide the charm? Conceited fellow! Very well, we'll settle for that. But remember, if you don't treat her well, you'll have me to cope with!"
    "Do I look such a creep, Mrs. Low?"
    "No, you look like an angel. That's what worries me. And Sylvia tells me you've left your wife."
    "As a matter of fact, she left me. And not even for another man. I guess she just couldn't stand me."
    "Dear me, what did you do? But never mind. You can tell me at dinner. I've put you on my right." And leaving me thus dazzled, she turned to greet another guest.
    As Sylvia moved from lady to lady—it was her custom, I discovered, to keep largely to her own sex in the cocktail hour—I had ample occasion to take in every detail of the great chamber. It was, as I now realize, my first impression of perfect Louis XV, unless it should have been called Pompadour, being free of the stateliness and pomposity of so much of the royal decoration of that century. The colors were a blend of sky blue, gold apricot, pale peach, mauve