ful of women. What a charm was there for the man who
loved her, guarding jealously that veil of flesh which hid the woman's
soul from every eye,--a veil which the hand of love might lift for an
instant and then let drop over conjugal delights! Veronique's lips were
faultlessly curved and painted in the clear vermilion of her pure warm
blood. Her chin and the lower part of her face were a little heavy, in
the acceptation given by painters to that term,--a heaviness which is,
according to the relentless laws of physiognomy, the indication of an
almost morbid vehemence in passion. She had above her brow, which was
finely modelled and almost imperious, a magnificent diadem of hair,
voluminous, redundant, and now of a chestnut color.

From the age of sixteen to the day of her marriage Veronique's bearing
was always thoughtful, and sometimes melancholy. Living in such deep
solitude, she was forced, like other solitary persons, to examine and
consider the spectacle of that which went on within her,--the progress
of her thought, the variety of the images in her mind, and the scope of
feelings warmed and nurtured in a life so pure.

Those who looked up from their lower level as they passed along the
rue de la Cite might have seen, on all fine days, the daughter of the
Sauviats sitting at her open window, sewing, embroidering, or pricking
the needle through the canvas of her worsted-work, with a look that
was often dreamy. Her head was vividly defined among the flowers which
poetized the brown and crumbling sills of her casement windows
with their leaded panes. Sometimes the reflection of the red damask
window-curtains added to the effect of that head, already so highly
colored; like a crimson flower she glowed in the aerial garden so
carefully trained upon her window-sill.

The quaint old house possessed therefore something more quaint than
itself,--the portrait of a young girl worthy of Mieris, or Van Ostade,
or Terburg, or Gerard Douw, framed in one of those old, defaced, half
ruined windows the brushes of the old Dutch painters loved so well. When
some stranger, surprised or interested by the building, stopped before
it and gazed at the second story, old Sauviat would poke his head beyond
the overhanging projection, certain that he should see his daughter at
her window. Then he would retreat into the shop rubbing his hands and
saying to his wife in the Auvergne vernacular:--

"Hey! old woman; they're admiring your daughter