of fine glowing ashes were crumbling away at the back of the
hearths, while on the green tables, still vibrant with the night's play,
there stood burning a few silver candlesticks whose flames rose straight
in the wan light of day. The noise, the coming and going, ceased at
the third floor, where sundry members of the club had their apartments.
Among them was the Marquis de Monpavon, whose abode Jenkins was now on
his way to visit.

"What! It is you, doctor? The devil take it! What is the time then? I'm
not visible."

"Not even for the doctor?"

"Oh, for nobody. Question of etiquette, _mon cher_. No matter, come in
all the same. You'll warm your feet for a moment while Francis finishes
doing my hair."

Jenkins entered the bed-chamber, a banal place like all furnished
apartments, and moved towards the fire on which there were set to
heat curling-tongs of all sizes, while in the contiguous laboratory,
separated from the room by a curtain of Algerian tapestry, the Marquis
de Monpavon gave himself up to the manipulations of his valet. Odours of
patchouli, of cold-cream, of hartshorn, and of singed hair escaped from
the part of the room which was shut off, and from time to time, when
Francis came to fetch a curling-iron, Jenkins caught sight of a huge
dressing-table laden with a thousand little instruments of ivory, and
mother-of-pearl, with steel files, scissors, puffs, and brushes, with
bottles, with little trays, with cosmetics, labelled and arranged
methodically in groups and lines; and amid all this display, awkward and
already shaky, an old man's hand, shrunken and long, delicately trimmed
and polished about the nails like that of a Japanese painter, which
faltered about among this fine hardware and doll's china.

While continuing the process of making up his face, the longest, the
most complicated of his morning occupations, Monpavon chatted with the
doctor, told of his little ailments, and the good effect of the _pills_.
They made him young again, he said. And at a distance, thus, without
seeing him, one would have taken him for the Duc de Mora, to such
a degree had he usurped his manner of speech. There were the same
unfinished phrases, ended by "ps, ps, ps," muttered between the teeth,
expressions like "What's its name?" "Who was it?" constantly thrown into
what he was saying, a kind of aristocratic stutter, fatigued, listless,
wherein you might perceive a profound contempt for the vulgar art of
speech. In t