Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/223

 But the most fashionable, popular, and easiest means to imitate the glow on the cheek of youth is—rouge.

The word rouge in French simply means red, and is applied to a great variety of products having this color. That, however, which is put up and sold for the complexion is generally, and should be always, derived from one of two sources: either from cochineal, a small bug found on the leaves of the cactus plant in Brazil, which yields carmine, or from the familiar plant known as "dyer's saffron," or safflower, which furnishes carthamine. The latter is called rouge végétale. A cheap, inferior, and injurious article is prepared from vermilion, which is a form of mercury, and should be avoided.

The preparation of rouge is one of the most delicate operations in practical chemistry, and hardly any but the French have succeeded in producing a first class article. There is reason for this beyond mere technical skill, as a London manufacturer once learned to his cost. He had tried repeatedly to equal the French article, and failed just as often. In despair, he visited one of the most famous houses of Lyons, and offered the principal thirty thousand francs if he would show him their process. The principal accepted, and conducted the Englishman through the establishment. What was the disappointment of the latter to find the methods in every respect identical with his own. He returned home, tried again, and failed again. The principal of