"Paul I. died suddenly, as everyone knows, in the month of March, 1801. Many conjectures have been hazarded as to the cause of this unexpected death; and in the interest of my publisher, if I ever have one, I shall not repeat one of them. Certain books are treated, on their arrival in Russia, with as scant courtesy as that extended to the milliners' husbands; and I should be in despair if mine, presuming that book there will be, should be placed on the index of the director of police, a functionary of whom I beg to declare myself the very humble servant.
I will content myself, therefore, with saying that the late Paul I. was an emperor endowed with more than the ordinary allowance of personal hideousness, and that he did not recover, after his death, a nobility of feature with which he had not been favoured in life. Nevertheless, it was necessary that, according to custom, he should be exhibited before the eyes of the people; and means were sought to diminish as much as possible the effect of the rapid and revolting decomposition of His defunct Majesty's features. I was sent for to the Palace to advise upon this expedient. When I stood in presence of the corpse, I realized that the alteration in the face was due rather to the actual colour of the skin than to any displacement of the muscles, and I thought that with the aid of a little white and rouge, cunningly applied, I could succeed in giving a more life-like colour to this dead flesh. I next brushed up and curled the Emperor's hair; and in the end I succeeded in restoring this face, in which decomposition had already begun its hideous work, so well, that Paul I. was actually less ugly on his state bed of death than he had been while living.
I had just reached my fifty-fifth year when I thus set the last touch to the edifice of my reputation. I had followed the career of a hair-dresser in all its ramifications; I had distinguished myself in the invention of every style of head-dress; no shade, no texture of hair had escaped the exercise of my art; but one thing was wanting to achieve my glory: the exploit of dressing the hair and painting the face of a corpse. This last complementary feat I achieved on the 24th of March, 1801…"
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Amicalement
Armand
shares his techniques for painting, rigging and basing Age of Sail warships.