There are dealers in wigs and
essences who are enough to make one's hair stand on end; they care
only to sell you bottles. It is pitiable! But that's business. Such
poor wretches cut hair and dress it as they can. I, when I arrived in
Paris from Toulouse, my ambition was to succeed the great Marius, to
be a true Marius, to make that name illustrious. I alone, more than
all the four others, I said to myself, 'I will conquer, or die.'
(There! now sit straight, I am going to finish you.) I was the first
to introduce ELEGANCE; I made my salons the object of curiosity. I
disdain advertisements; what advertisements would have cost, monsieur,
I put into elegance, charm, comfort. Next year I shall have a
quartette in one of the salons to discourse music, and of the best.
Yes, we ought to charm away the ennui of those whose heads we dress. I
do not conceal from myself the annoyances to a client. (Look at
yourself!) To have one's hair dressed is fatiguing, perhaps as much so
as posing for one's portrait. Monsieur knows perhaps that the famous
Monsieur Humbolt (I did the best I could with the few hairs America
left him--science has this in common with savages, that she scalps her
men clean), that illustrious savant, said that next to the suffering
of going to be hanged was that of going to be painted; but I place the
trial of having your head dressed before that of being painted, and so
do certain women.
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