a pistil from a calyx, and could fling back the
curls of her head into the jewelled knot behind her head, Beatrix would
hold her own victoriously with ideal beauties like _that_--"

And Felicite showed Calyste a fine copy of a picture by Mieris, in which
was a woman robed in white satin, standing with a paper in her hand,
and singing with a Brabancon seigneur, while a Negro beside them poured
golden Spanish wine into a goblet, and the old housekeeper in the
background arranged some biscuits.

"Fair women, blonds," said Camille, "have the advantage over us poor
brown things of a precious diversity; there are a hundred ways for a
blonde to charm, and only one for a brunette. Besides, blondes are more
womanly; we are too like men, we French brunettes--Well, well!" she
cried, "pray don't fall in love with Beatrix from the portrait I am
making of her, like that prince, I forget his name, in the Arabian
Nights. You would be too late, my dear boy."

These words were said pointedly. The admiration depicted on the young
man's face was more for the picture than for the painter whose _faire_
was failing of its purpose. As she spoke, Felicite was employing all the
resources of her eloquent physiognomy.

"Blond as she is, however," she went on, "Beatrix has not the grace of
her color; her lines are severe; she is elegant, but hard; her face
has a harsh contour, though at times it reveals a soul with Southern
passions; an angel flashes out and then expires. Her eyes are thirsty.
She looks best when seen full face; the profile has an air of being
squeezed between two doors. You will see if I am mistaken. I will tell
you now what made us intimate friends. For three years, from 1828 to
1831, Beatrix, while enjoying the last fetes of the Restoration, making
the round of the salons, going to court, taking part in the fancy-balls
of the Elysee-Bourbon, was all the while judging men, and things,
events, and life itself, from the height of her own thought. Her mind
was busy. These first years of the bewilderment the world caused her
prevented her heart from waking up. From 1830 to 1831 she spent the time
of the revolutionary disturbance at her husband's country-place, where
she was bored like a saint in paradise. On her return to Paris she
became convinced, perhaps justly, that the revolution of July, in
the minds of some persons purely political, would prove to be a moral
revolution. The social class to which she belonged, not being abl