“Yes, aunt, I have the whole apparatus, and if you will sit down—­”

“I am frightfully pale-just a little, Ernest; you know what I told you,” and she turned her head, presenting her right eye to me.  I can still see that eye.

I do not know what strange perfume, foreign to aunts in general, rose from her garments.

“You understand, my dear boy, that it is only an occasion like the present, and the necessities of a historical costume, that make me consent to paint like this.”

“My dear little aunt, if you move, my hand will shake.”  And, indeed, in touching her long lashes, my hand trembled.

“Ah! yes, in the corner, a little—­you are right, it gives a softness, a vagueness, a—­it is very funny, that little pot of blue.  How ugly it must be!  How things lead on one to another!  Once one’s hair is powdered, one must have a little pearl powder on one’s face in order not to look as yellow as an orange; and one’s cheeks once whitened, one can’t—­you are tickling me with your brush—­one can’t remain like a miller, so a touch of rouge is inevitable.  And then—­see how wicked it is—­if, after all that, one does not enlarge the eyes a bit, they look as if they had been bored with a gimlet, don’t they?  It is like this that one goes on little by little, till one comes to the gallows.”

My aunt began to laugh freely, as she studied her face.

“Ah! that is very effective what you have just done—­well under the eye, that’s it.  What animation it gives to the look!  How clever those creatures are, how well they know everything that becomes one!  It is shameful, for with them it is a trick, nothing more.  Oh! you may put on a little more of that blue of yours, I see what it does now.  It has a very good effect.  How you are arching the eyebrows.  Don’t you think it is a little too black?  You know I should not like to look as if—­you are right, though.  Where did you learn all that?  You might earn a deal of money, do you know, if you set up a practice.”

“Well, aunt, are you satisfied?”

My aunt held her hand-glass at a distance, brought it near, held it away again, smiled, and, leaning back in her chair, said:  “It must be acknowledged that it is charming, this.  What do your friends call it?”

“Make-up, aunt.”

“It is vexatious that it has not another name, for really I shall have recourse to it for the evening—­from time to time.  It is certain that it is attractive.  Haven’t you a little box for the lips?”

“Here it is.”

“Ah! in a bottle, it is liquid.”

“It is a kind of vinegar, as you see.  Don’t move, aunt.  Put out your lips as if you wished to kiss me.  You don’t by chance want to?”

“Yes, and you deserve it.  You will teach me your little accomplishments, will you not?”

“Willingly, aunt.”

“Your vinegar is miraculous! what brightness it gives to the lips, and how white one’s teeth look.  It is true my teeth were always—­”