was a
Venus;--no, though, it couldn't have been a Venus in a church, could it?
Well, then, a Magdalen, I guess, or a Madonna, or something. I fancy the
man painted for himself, and christened for others. So, when I was born,
some years afterward, papa, gratefully remembering this dazzling little
vignette of his youth, was absurd enough to christen me Giorgione.
That's how I came by my identity; but the folks all call me Yone,--a
baby name.

I'm a blonde, you know,--none of your silver-washed things. I wouldn't
give a _fico_ for a girl with flaxen hair; she might as well be a wax
doll, and have her eyes moved by a wire; besides, they've no souls.
I imagine they were remnants at our creation, and somehow scrambled
together, and managed to get up a little life among themselves; but it's
good for nothing, and everybody sees through the pretence. They're glass
chips, and brittle shavings, slender pinkish scrids,--no name for them;
but just you say blonde, soft and slow and rolling,--it brings up
a brilliant, golden vitality, all manner of white and torrid
magnificences, and you see me! I've watched little bugs--gold
rose-chafers--lie steeping in the sun, till every atom of them must have
been searched with the warm radiance, and have felt, that, when they
reached that point, I was just like them, golden all through,--not dyed,
but created. Sunbeams like to follow me, I think. Now, when I stand in
one before this glass, infiltrated with the rich tinge, don't I look
like the spirit of it just stepped out for inspection? I seem to myself
like the complete incarnation of light, full, bounteous, overflowing,
and I wonder at and adore anything so beautiful; and the reflection
grows finer and deeper while I gaze, till I dare not do so any longer.
So, without more words, I'm a golden blonde. You see me now: not too
tall,--five feet four; not slight, or I couldn't have such perfect
roundings, such flexible moulding. Here's nothing of the spiny Diana and
Pallas, but Clytie or Isis speaks in such delicious curves. It don't
look like flesh and blood, does it? Can you possibly imagine it will
ever change? Oh!

Now see the face,--not small, either; lips with no particular outline,
but melting, and seeming as if they would stain yours, should you touch
them. No matter about the rest, except the eyes. Do you meet such eyes
often? You wouldn't open yours so, if you did. Note their color now,
before the ray goes. Yellow hazel? Not a bit of