Three-quarters of an
hour, however, still interposed. How was I to dispose of that interval?
I had two or three idle books, it is true, as companions-companions; but
there are many moods in which one cannot read. My novel lay with my rug
and walking-stick on the sofa, and I did not care if the heroine and the
hero were both drowned together in the water barrel that I saw in the
inn-yard under my window. I took a turn or two up and down my room, and
sighed, looking at myself in the glass, adjusted my great white
"choker," folded and tied after Brummel, the immortal "Beau," put on a
buff waist-coat and my blue swallow-tailed coat with gilt buttons; I
deluged my pocket-handkerchief with Eau-de-Cologne (we had not then the
variety of bouquets with which the genius of perfumery has since blessed
us) I arranged my hair, on which I piqued myself, and which I loved to
groom in those days. That dark-brown _chevelure_, with a natural
curl, is now represented by a few dozen perfectly white hairs, and its
place--a smooth, bald, pink head--knows it no more. But let us forget
these mortifications. It was then rich, thick, and dark-brown. I was
making a very careful toilet. I took my unexceptionable hat from its
case, and placed it lightly on my wise head, as nearly as memory and
practice enabled me to do so, at that very slight inclination which the
immortal person I have mentioned was wont to give to his.
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