midday
What could he do ? He never read , and he had no studio ; in one way or another he had to pass the time . He passed it in dangling about several very pretty women in wonderful Paris toilets , and reflected that it was always something gained for a sculptor to sit under a tree , looking at his leisure into a charming face and saying things that made it smile and play its muscles and part its lips and show its teeth . Attached to these ladies were certain gentlemen who walked about in clouds of perfume , rose at midday , and supped at midnight . Roderick had found himself in the mood for thinking them very amusing fellows . He was surprised at his own taste , but he let it take its course . It led him to the discovery that to live with ladies who expect you to present them with expensive bouquets , to ride with them in the Black Forest on well-looking horses , to come into their opera-boxes on nights when Patti sang and prices were consequent , to propose little light suppers at the Conversation House after the opera or drives by moonlight to the Castle , to be always arrayed and anointed , trinketed and gloved , -- that to move in such society , we say , though it might be a privilege , was a privilege with a penalty attached .