the
profound attention of a painter in presence of the Margharita Doni, one
of the glories of the Pitti palace. Modeste,--blossom enclosed, like
that of Catullus,--was she worth all these precautions?

You have seen the cage; behold the bird! Just twenty years of age,
slender and delicate as the sirens which English designers invent for
their "Books of Beauty," Modeste was, like her mother before her, the
captivating embodiment of a grace too little understood in France, where
we choose to call it sentimentality, but which among German women is
the poetry of the heart coming to the surface of the being and spending
itself--in affectations if the owner is silly, in divine charms of
manner if she is "spirituelle" and intelligent. Remarkable for her pale
golden hair, Modeste belonged to the type of woman called, perhaps in
memory of Eve, the celestial blonde; whose satiny skin is like a silk
paper applied to the flesh, shuddering at the winter of a cold look,
expanding in the sunshine of a loving glance,--teaching the hand to be
jealous of the eye. Beneath her hair, which was soft and feathery and
worn in many curls, the brow, which might have been traced by a compass
so pure was its modelling, shone forth discreet, calm to placidity,
and yet luminous with thought: when and where could another be found so
transparently clear or more exquisitely smooth? It seemed, like a pearl,
to have its orient. The eyes, of a blue verging on gray and limpid
as the eyes of a child, had all the mischief, all the innocence of
childhood, and they harmonized well with the arch of the eyebrows,
faintly indicated by lines like those made with a brush on Chinese
faces. This candor of the soul was still further evidenced around the
eyes, in their corners, and about the temples, by pearly tints threaded
with blue, the special privilege of these delicate complexions. The
face, whose oval Raphael so often gave to his Madonnas, was remarkable
for the sober and virginal tone of the cheeks, soft as a Bengal rose,
upon which the long lashes of the diaphanous eyelids cast shadows that
were mingled with light. The throat, bending as she worked, too delicate
perhaps, and of milky whiteness, recalled those vanishing lines that
Leonardo loved. A few little blemishes here and there, like the patches
of the eighteenth century, proved that Modeste was indeed a child of
earth, and not a creation dreamed of in Italy by the angelic school. Her
lips, delicate yet f