We must here compel ourselves to spoil this portrait by the avowal of a littleness.  The chevalier put cotton in his ears, and wore, appended to them, two little ear-rings representing negroes’ heads in diamonds, of admirable workmanship.  He clung to these singular appendages, explaining that since his ears had been bored he had ceased to have headaches (he had had headaches).  We do not present the chevalier as an accomplished man; but surely we can pardon, in an old celibate whose heart sends so much blood to his left cheek, these adorable qualities, founded, perhaps, on some sublime secret history.

Besides, the Chevalier de Valois redeemed those negroes’ heads by so many other graces that society felt itself sufficiently compensated.  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.