When they wheeled the machine out on its cart, eight feet tall at least, an antique gewgaw of brass nozzles and gauges, pumps and spouts, like something you'd find in an 18th-century laboratory, she hardly knew what it was. She'd simply asked for a cup of coffee. Three liveried waiters had rolled out the cart with its copper tower polished to the sheen of a newly minted coin and parked it beside her with flourishes of linen and the clinking of bone china on a silver tray, a gold-rimmed cup set on its saucer with a miniature spoon. Then the hiss and clouds of steam, as magnificent... More >>>