Éclat

The distressing explanation she had to make to Harriet, and all that poor Harriet would be suffering, with the awkwardness of future meetings, the difficulties of continuing or discontinuing the acquaintance, of subduing feelings, concealing resentment, and avoiding éclat, were enough to occupy her in most unmirthful reflections some time longer, and she went to bed at last with nothing settled but the conviction of her having blundered most dreadfully.

"All she needs is a year or two at a fashionable finishing school, so that at eighteen she can come out with éclat," put in Aunt Clara.

Most objects of this general class, with the partial exception of articles of personal adornment, would serve all other purposes than the honorific one equally well, whether owned by the person viewing them or not; and even as regards personal ornaments it is to be added that their chief purpose is to lend éclat to the person of their wearer (or owner) by comparison with other persons who are compelled to do without.

Against this background, made mutable by T. J. Gerckens's ethereal lighting, simple props and gestures are used with startling visual éclat.

The same cannot be said for the writing of Oriana Fallaci, the celebrated Italian journalist whose high-octane interviews with powerful men had such éclat in the seventies, and whose memoir of her dead lover, the Greek resistance fighter Alexander Panagoulis, might be described as a classic of hysterical materialism.