Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/112

 The few teeth he could boast were polished up white and glistening. Their ranks indeed had been sadly thinned, but, like the last survivors of a beleaguered garrison, though shattered and disordered, they mustered bravely to the front. His wrinkled cheeks and pointed chin were shaved trim and smooth, while the moustaches on his upper lip, though nearly white, were carefully clipped and arranged in the prevailing fashion. More than once during the progress of the toilet, before a mirror which, he cursed repeatedly for a dull and unbecoming glass, his heart misgave him, and he treated his valets to a few camp compliments current amongst the old die-hards of Turenne; but when at last his cravat was fastened—his frills adjusted, his just au corps fitted on, his delicate ruffles pulled over his wasted hands, with their swollen knuckles and magnificent rings, his diamond-hilted rapier hung exactly at his hip, and his laced hat, cocked jauntily à la Mousquetaire, he took one approving survey in the mirror, unbecoming as it was, and marched forth confident and resolved to conquer.

His carriage was waiting for him at the porter's lodge of his hotel. A nobleman of those days seldom walked afoot in the streets, and it took four horses at least, one coachman, one postilion, and two or three footmen in laced coats, to convey a single biped the distance of a couple of hundred metres.

As the door of his heraldry-covered coach closed on him with a bang, quoth Auguste, who had dressed him, to Etienne, who had handed the clothes and shared impartially in his master's maledictions—

"Come, that's not so bad, Etienne! Hein? What would you have at sixty-three? And without me, Bones of St. Martin! what is he? A monkey, a skeleton, a heap of rugs and refuse! Ah! What it is! the toilet!—when a man is really master of his work."

The Prince-Marshal, you see, like other heroes, was none to his valet de chambre; but Auguste, a true artist, having neglected none of the minutiæ, on which success depended, looked to general results, and exulted in the masterpiece that he felt was a creation of his own genius.

Now it fell out that the Prince de Chateau-Gruerrand, hereditary Grand Chasseur to the King, Master of the