At first the old Celadon submitted to the beautifying process in profound secrecy, at the time when the child left his room for his first play. But, as Mario asked no embarrassing or impertinent questions, the old man gradually relaxed his great precautions, and proceeded to his daily rejuvenation with most ingenuous explanations.
The cosmetics were christened cooling perfumes, and the brilliant coloring was called keeping the skin in condition.
Mario seemed not to know what malice was. But children see everything; and he was not duped by Adamas, only he saw no cause for ridicule. His dear father could do nothing ridiculous. He fancied that these artifices were a part of the toilet of all persons of quality.
So it happened that, as he was more or less coquettish himself, he conceived a strong inclination to have his own face made up like a gentleman's. He made that request; and, as he was simply told in reply that at his age such devices were not necessary, he did not look upon it as a positive refusal. So that, one evening, happening to be alone for a moment in his adoptive father's room, and seeing the phials scattered over the table, it occurred to him to perfume himself in white and pink as he had seen Adamas perfume the marquis. That done, he thought that he ought to enlarge and darken his eyebrows, and, finding that that gave him a martial mien which delighted him hugely, he could not resist the temptation to draw two pretty little black hooks above his lips and a lovely royale underneath.
As he had no light except a single candle which had been accidentally left on the table, he used the colors too freely, and could not draw the outlines very sharply.
The supper-bell rang; he hurried to the table, well pleased with his bad-boy aspect, and maintaining his seriousness admirably.
The marquis paid no heed at first; but, Lauriane having uttered a hearty peal of laughter, he raised his eyes and saw that sweet little face so strangely transformed that he could not refrain from laughing with her.
But in the depths of his heart the good marquis was vexed and grieved. Mario certainly had had no idea of making sport of him; but the broad, loud way in which he had daubed himself betrayed a little too frankly, before Lauriane, the existence and use of that palette of beauty which he believed that he had kept so carefully concealed in the drawers of his dressing-table and on his face. He did not even dare ask the child where he had obtained the materials for that coloring; he dreaded a too ingenuous reply. So he contented himself with saying to him that he had disfigured himself, and that he must go and wash his face.
Lauriane realized her old friend's embarrassment and uneasiness, and restrained her merriment; but Mario's whim seemed to her all the more amusing, and throughout the supper she suffered from that mad, girlish longing to laugh which constraint transforms to nervous excitement.
The effect on Mario was magical, until at last the marquis mildly said to them: