His pint of champagne was dry and bitter stuff,
not like the Veuve Clicquots of old days.
Over his cup of coffee, he bethought him that he would go to the opera.
In the Times, therefore--he had a distrust of other papers--he read the
announcement for the evening. It was 'Fidelio.'
Mercifully not one of those new-fangled German pantomimes by that fellow
Wagner.
Putting on his ancient opera hat, which, with its brim flattened by use,
and huge capacity, looked like an emblem of greater days, and, pulling
out an old pair of very thin lavender kid gloves smelling strongly of
Russia leather, from habitual proximity to the cigar-case in the pocket
of his overcoat, he stepped into a hansom.
The cab rattled gaily along the streets, and old Jolyon was struck by
their unwonted animation.
'The hotels must be doing a tremendous business,' he thought. A
few years ago there had been none of these big hotels. He made a
satisfactory reflection on some property he had in the neighbourhood. It
must be going up in value by leaps and bounds! What traffic!
But from that he began indulging in one of those strange impersonal
speculations, so uncharacteristic of a Forsyte, wherein lay, in part,
the secret of his supremacy amongst them.
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