e morning splendor of that quarter.

Jenkins alighted at the corner of Rue Royale. From roof to cellar of
the great gambling-house servants were bustling about, shaking rugs,
airing the salons where the odor of cigar-smoke still lingered, where
heaps of fine ashes were blowing about in the fireplaces, while on the
green tables, still quivering with the games of the night, the candles
were still burning in silver candelabra, the flame ascending straight
into the pallid light of day. The uproar and the going and coming
ceased on the third floor, where several members of the club had their
apartments. Of the number was the Marquis de Monpavon, to whose door
Jenkins bent his steps.

"Ah! is it you, doctor? Deuce take it! What time is it, pray? I'm not
at home."

"Not even to the doctor?"

"Oh! not to anybody. A question of costume, my dear fellow. Never mind,
come in all the same. Toast your feet a moment while Francois finishes
my hair."

Jenkins entered the bedroom, which was as prosaic a place as all
furnished apartments are, and approached the fire, where curling-tongs
of all dimensions were heating, while from the adjoining laboratory,
separated from the bedroom by an Algerian curtain, the Marquis de
Monpavon submitted to the manipulations of his valet. Odors of
patchouli, cold cream, burned horn and burned hair escaped from the
restricted quarters; and from time to time, when Francois came out to
take a fresh pair of tongs, Jenkins caught a glimpse of an enormous
dressing-table laden with innumerable little instruments of ivory,
steel, and mother-of-pearl, files, scissors, powder-puffs and brushes,
phials, cups, cosmetics, labelled, arranged in lines, and amid all that
rubbish, petty ironmongery and dolls' playthings, a hand, the hand of
an old man, awkward and trembling, dry and long, with nails as
carefully kept as a Japanese painter's.

While making up his face, the longest and most complicated of his
matutinal occupations, Monpavon chatted with the doctor, told him of
his aches and pains and of the good effect of the pearls, which were
making him younger, he said. And listening to him thus, at a little
distance, without seeing him, one would have believed he was the Duc de
Mora, he had so faithfully copied his way of speaking. There were the
same unfinished sentences, ending in a _ps_--_ps_--_ps_--uttered
between the teeth. "What's-his-names" and "What-d'ye-call-'ems" at
every turn, a sort of lazy, bored,