mpensated.
He really took such immense trouble to conceal his age and give
pleasure to his friends. In the first place, we must call attention to
the extreme care he gave to his linen, the only distinction that
well-bred men can nowadays exhibit in their clothes. The linen of the
chevalier was invariably of a fineness and whiteness that were truly
aristocratic. As for his coat, though remarkable for its cleanliness,
it was always half worn-out, but without spots or creases. The
preservation of that garment was something marvellous to those who
noticed the chevalier's high-bred indifference to its shabbiness. He
did not go so far as to scrape the seams with glass,--a refinement
invented by the Prince of Wales; but he did practice the rudiments of
English elegance with a personal satisfaction little understood by the
people of Alencon. The world owes a great deal to persons who take
such pains to please it. In this there is certainly some
accomplishment of that most difficult precept of the Gospel about
rendering good for evil. This freshness of ablution and all the other
little cares harmonized charmingly with the blue eyes, the ivory
teeth, and the blond person of the old chevalier.

The only blemish was that this retired Adonis had nothing manly about
him; he seemed to be employing this toilet varnish to hide the ruins
occasioned by the military service of gallantry only. But we must
hasten to add that his voice produced what might be called an
antithesis to his blond delicacy. Unless you adopted the opinion of
certain observers of the human heart, and thought that the chevalier
had the voice of his nose, his organ of speech would have amazed you
by its full and redundant sound. Without possessing the volume of
classical bass voices, the tone of it was pleasing from a slightly
muffled quality like that of an English bugle, which is firm and
sweet, strong but velvety.

The chevalier had repudiated the ridiculous costume still preserved by
certain monarchical old men; he had frankly modernized himself. He was
always seen in a maroon-colored coat with gilt buttons, half-tight
breeches of poult-de-soie with gold buckles, a white waistcoat without
embroidery, and a tight cravat showing no shirt-collar,--a last
vestige of the old French costume which he did not renounce, perhaps,
because it enabled him to show a neck like that of the sleekest abbe.
His shoes were noticeable for their square buckles, a style of which
the p