"It would seem," he said, "that when you begin to resort to artificial methods, you can never stop?"
"That is the general rule," replied the rejuvenator; "choose whether you will be old or appear old?"
"But am I old, pray?"
"No, since you can still appear to be young by the use of my receipts."
From that day Bois-Doré wore a wig; eyebrows, moustaches and beard painted and waxed; chalk on his nose; rouge on his cheeks; fragrant powders in every fold of his wrinkles; and, lastly, perfumes and scent-bags all over his person; so that, when he left his room, you could smell him in the poultry-yard; and if he simply passed the kennel, all his coursing dogs sneezed and made wry faces for an hour.
When he had thoroughly succeeded in making an absurd old automaton out of the handsome old man he had been, he took measures to spoil his figure, which had the dignity befitting his years, by having his doublets and short-clothes lined with double rows of steel, and holding himself so erect that he went to bed every night with a lame back.
It would have killed him, had not the fashion changed, luckily for him.
The stiff, close-fitting doublets of Henry IV. gave way to the light surtouts of the young favorites of Louis XIII. The hoop-shaped short-clothes were succeeded by broad, full breeches which yielded to every movement of the body.
It cost Bois-Doré a pang to give way to these innovations, and to part with his rigid godronné ruffs just to be a little more comfortable in the light rotondes. He sorely regretted the stiff lace, but ribbons and fluffy laces seduced him by slow degrees, and he returned from a brief visit to Paris dressed in the style affected by young men of fashion, and imitating their heedless, exhausted airs, sprawling in easy chairs, striking weary attitudes, rising from his seat in waltz time; in a word, enacting, with his tall figure and strongly-marked features, the rôle of insipid little marquis, which Molière, thirty years later, found complete in its absurdity and ripe for his satire.
This method enabled Bois-Doré to conceal the real burden of his years beneath a disguise which transformed him into a sort of absurd ghost.