Then he heaved himself ponderously out of his great chair.

He donned his wig, awry in his haste, and lurched forward towards Anselme, his fat fingers straining at his open doublet and drawing it together.
"Madame la Douairiere here ?" he cried.

"Make fast these buttons, rascal! Quick! Am I to receive a lady thus?
Am I--?
Babylas," he snapped, interrupting himself and turning aside even as Anselme put forth hands to do his bidding.

"A mirror, from my closet! Dispatch!" The secretary was gone in a flash, and in a flash returned, even as Anselme completed his master's toilet.

But clearly Monsieur de Tressan had awakened in a peevish humour, for no sooner were the buttons of his doublet secured than with his own fingers he tore them loose again, cursing his majordomo the while with vigour.
"You dog, Anselme, have you no sense of fitness, no discrimination?
Am I to appear in this garment of the mode of a half-century ago before Madame la Marquise?
Take it off; take it off, man! Get me the coat that came last month from Paris--the yellow one with the hanging sleeves and the gold buttons, and a sash--the crimson sash I had from Taillemant.
Can you move no quicker, animal?
Are you still here ?" Anselme, thus enjoined, lent an unwonted alacrity to his movements, waddling grotesquely like a hastening waterfowl.