Everything was
beautiful, sumptuous and magnificent, and Chupin admired, though
he did not envy, this luxury. He said to himself that, if ever he
became rich, his establishment should be quite different. He
would have preferred rather more simplicity, a trifle less satin,
velvet, hangings, mirrors and gilding. Still this did not prevent
him from going into ecstasies over each room he entered; and he
expressed his admiration so artlessly that the valet, feeling as
much flattered as if he were the owner of the place, took a sort
of pride in exhibiting everything.
He showed Chupin the target which the viscount practised at with
pistols for an hour every morning; for Monsieur le Vicomte was a
capital marksman, and could lodge eight balls out of ten in the
neck of a bottle at a distance of twenty paces. He also displayed
his master's swords; for Monsieur le Vicomte handled side arms as
adroitly as pistols. He took a lesson every day from one of the
best fencing-masters in Paris; and his duels had always terminated
fortunately. He also showed the viscount's blue velvet dressing-
gown, his fur-trimmed slippers, and even his elaborately
embroidered night-shirts. But it was the dressing-room that most
astonished and stupefied Chupin. He stood gazing in open-mouthed
wonder at the immense white marble table, with its water spigots
and its basins, its sponges and boxes, its pots and vials and
cups; and he counted the brushes by the dozen--brushes hard and
soft, brushes for the hair, for the beard, for the hands, and the
application of cosmetic to the mustaches and eyebrows.
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