e spring
of the arms from the shoulders, superb in outline, seems to belong to
a colossal woman. The arms are vigorously modelled, ending in wrists of
English delicacy and charming hands, plump, dimpled, and adorned with
rosy, almond-shaped nails; these hands are of a whiteness which
reveals that the body, so round, so firm, so well set-up, is of another
complexion altogether than the face. The firm, cold carriage of the head
is corrected by the mobility of the lips, their changing expression, and
the artistic play of the nostrils.

And yet, in spite of all these promises--hidden, perhaps, from the
profane--the calm of that countenance has something, I know not what,
that is vexatious. More sad, more serious than gracious, that face
is marked by the melancholy of constant meditation. For this reason
Mademoiselle des Touches listens more than she talks. She startles
by her silence and by that deep-reaching glance of intense fixity. No
educated person could see her without thinking of Cleopatra, that dark
little woman who almost changed the face of the world. But in Camille
the natural animal is so complete, so self-sufficing, of a nature so
leonine, that a man, however little of a Turk he may be, regrets the
presence of so great a mind in such a body, and could wish that she were
wholly woman. He fears to find the strange distortion of an abnormal
soul. Do not cold analysis and matter-of-fact theory point to passions
in such a woman? Does she judge, and not feel? Or, phenomenon more
terrible, does she not feel and judge at one and the same time? Able for
all things through her brain, ought her course to be circumscribed by
the limitations of other women? Has that intellectual strength weakened
her heart? Has she no charm? Can she descend to those tender nothings
by which a woman occupies, and soothes and interests the man she loves?
Will she not cast aside a sentiment when it no longer responds to some
vision of infinitude which she grasps and contemplates in her soul? Who
can scale the heights to which her eyes have risen? Yes, a man fears
to find in such a woman something unattainable, unpossessable,
unconquerable. The woman of strong mind should remain a symbol; as a
reality she must be feared. Camille Maupin is in some ways the living
image of Schiller's Isis, seated in the darkness of the temple, at
whose feet her priests find the dead bodies of the daring men who have
consulted her.

The adventures of her life de