"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