This accessory science was, so to speak, a traced copy of that of love; it also had its two schools: the school of truth and candour, the “honest skill” which consists in keeping old age at bay; and the school of cleverness and subtlety, which seeks to recover the lost youth, to employ a little trickery, to repair time’s ravages—“a perpetual optical illusion,” as Erasmus calls it. The first demanded much forethought and prudence. From the earliest years of wedlock, with no immediate cause for alarm, it was an unremitting mortal struggle against a foe as yet imaginary. The wife found her weapons in solemn tomes and in the prescriptions she herself had collected. A firm opposition to her husband formed part of her scheme. As to special modes of treatment, they comprised aromatic baths, massage, and so forth, means which were very restrictive and mundane and tiresome, but wonderfully effective. A lady of that period could write in all pride and truthfulness, “Women remain almost always young.” There were some who, when close upon seventy, still merited the good opinion of connoisseurs. Others allowed themselves to be lulled asleep in the joy of youth, and only awoke under the stroke of some sharp warning; but then they sprang erect to their full height like a wounded tiger, and there was no act of unquenchable courage they did not accomplish. They had their teeth drawn, their skin scraped till it bled, they reduced their colour by dint of gulping down sand or cinders. They were heroines of unselfishness! But if, alas! decay proved in the end irresistible, and they had to resort to sham, how disastrous was the result! Around a made-up face ill-natured folk saw nothing but shams—sham tapestry, sham bronzes, sham conversation; art and platonism alike were banished: Ostez luy le fard et le vice, Vous luy ostez l’âme et le corps.[187] —_Ronsard._ The dressing-room became like a universal factory of pinchbeck. On the door might have been written the dictum, in general so utterly false, of Cennino Cennini:[188] “Art consists in creating, or at least in persuading men that that which is not, is.” Let us drop the subject. It is evident, on the contrary, that the honest art of dressing played an important part in practical platonism, so long as it was not carried too far. Since women were messengers of joy to the world, it followed that this mission must be declared by outward signs. What more natural than to give a princess a magnificent trousseau! It was not a luxury, it was the implement of her profession. Anne of France was sure that simplicity had been formerly pushed too far: everyone, she said, ought to maintain his rank and perform his duty in it; the world has a right to what belongs to it, that is, to everything save a woman’s heart: to neglect to study appearances, to cultivate false simplicity, is to commit an “unseemly and most dishonest” act. To dress must be considered a duty.