He bent his head to the baron, and with light, elastic step passed into his dressing-room.
CHAPTER VII.
THE TOILET.
When Kaunitz entered his dressing-room, his features had resumed their usual immobility. He walked in, without seeming to be aware of the presence of his attendants, who, ranged on either side of the apartment, awaited his commands.
He went up to his large Venetian mirror, and there surveyed himself at full length. With anxious glance his keen eyes sought out every faint line that told of the four-and-thirty years of his life. The picture seemed deeply interesting, for he stood a long time before the glass. Alt last the scrutiny was ended, and he turned slightly toward the hair-dresser.
"Is the peruke ready?"
The hair-dresser fluttered off to a bandbox, that lay on the toilet-table; and lifted out a fantastic-looking blond peruke, constructed after "his excellency's own design." Kaunitz was not aware of it, but this wig of his, with its droll mixture of flowing locks before, and prim purse behind, was an exact counterpart of the life and character of its inventor. He had had no intention of being symbolic in his contrivance; it had been solely designed to conceal the little tell-tale lines that were just about to indent the smooth surface of his white forehead. He bent his proud head, while the hair-dresser placed the wonderful wig, and then fell to studying its effect. Here he drew a curl forward, there he gently removed another; placing each one in its position over his eyebrows, so that no treacherous side-light should reveal any thing he chose to hide. Finally the work was done. "Hippolyte," said he, to the hair-dresser, who stood breathlessly by, "this is the way in which my wig is to be dressed from this day forward." [Footnote: From this time Kaunitz wore his wig in this eccentric fashion. It was adopted by the exquisites of Vienna, and called "the Kaunitz peruke.">[
Hippolyte bowed low, and stepped back to give place to the valets who came in with the count's costume. One bore a rich habit embroidered with gold, and the other a pair of velvet-shorts, red stockings, and diamond-buckled shoes.
"A simpler habit—Spanish, without embroidery, and white stockings."
White stockings! The valets were astounded at such high treason against the court regulations of Vienna. But Kaunitz, with a slight and contemptuous shrug, ordered them a second time to bring him white stockings, and never to presume to bring any other.