rtheless, she has really much grandeur of soul, a regal pride,
distinct ideas, and a marvellous facility for apprehending and
understanding all things; she can talk metaphysics and music, theology
and painting. You will see her, as a mature woman, what the rest of us
saw her as a bride. And yet there is something of affectation about
her in all this. She has too much the air of knowing abstruse
things,--Chinese, Hebrew, hieroglyphics perhaps, or the papyrus that
they wrapped round mummies. Personally, Beatrix is one of those blondes
beside whom Eve the fair would seem a Negress. She is slender and
straight and white as a church taper; her face is long and pointed; the
skin is capricious, to-day like cambric, to-morrow darkened with little
speckles beneath its surface, as if her blood had left a deposit of
dust there during the night. Her forehead is magnificent, though rather
daring. The pupils of her eyes are pale sea-green, floating on their
white balls under thin lashes and lazy eyelids. Her eyes have dark rings
around them often; her nose, which describes one-quarter of a circle,
is pinched about the nostrils; very shrewd and clever, but supercilious.
She has an Austrian mouth; the upper lip has more character than the
lower, which drops disdainfully. Her pale cheeks have no color unless
some very keen emotion moves her. Her chin is rather fat; mine is not
thin, and perhaps I do wrong to tell you that women with fat chins are
exacting in love. She has one of the most exquisite waists I ever saw;
the shoulders are beautiful, but the bust has not developed as well, and
the arms are thin. She has, however, an easy carriage and manner, which
redeems all such defects and sets her beauties in full relief. Nature
has given her that princess air which can never be acquired; it becomes
her, and reveals at sudden moments the woman of high birth. Without
being faultlessly beautiful, or prettily pretty, she produces, when
she chooses, ineffaceable impressions. She has only to put on a gown of
cherry velvet with clouds of lace, and wreathe with roses that angelic
hair of hers, which resembles floods of light, and she becomes divine.
If, on some excuse or other, she could wear the costume of the time
when women had long, pointed bodices, rising, slim and slender, from
voluminous brocaded skirts with folds so heavy that they stood alone,
and could hide her arms in those wadded sleeves with ruffles, from which
the hand comes out like