rascal! Quick! Am I to receive a lady thus? Am I - ? Babylas,"
he snapped, interrupting himself and turning aside even as Anselme
put forth hands to do his bidding. "A mirror, from my closet!
Dispatch!"

The secretary was gone in a flash, and in a flash returned, even
as Anselme completed his master's toilet. But clearly Monsieur de
Tressan had awakened in a peevish humour, for no sooner were the
buttons of his doublet secured than with his own fingers he tore
them loose again, cursing his majordomo the while with vigour.

"You dog, Anselme, have you no sense of fitness, no discrimination?
Am I to appear in this garment of the mode of a half-century ago
before Madame la Marquise? Take it off; take it off, man! Get me
the coat that came last month from Paris - the yellow one with the
hanging sleeves and the gold buttons, and a sash - the crimson sash
I had from Taillemant. Can you move no quicker, animal? Are you
still here?"

Anselme, thus enjoined, lent an unwonted alacrity to his movements,
waddling grotesquely like a hastening waterfowl. Between him and
the secretary they dressed my Lord the Seneschal, and decked him
out till he was fit to compare with a bird of paradise for
gorgeousness of colouring if not for harmony of hues and elegance
of outline.

Babylas held the mirror, and Anselme adjusted the Seneschal's wig,
whilst Tressan himself twisted his black mustachios - how they kept
their colour was a mystery to his acquaintance - and combed the
tuft of beard that sprouted from one of his several chins.