shoulders were attached
long arms, large or slender where they so should be. What shall I
say of her white hands, with their long fingers, and knuckles
without knots, delicately ending in rosy nails attached to the
flesh by a clear and single line? I come to her bosom with its
firm breasts, but short and high pointed, revealing the valley of
love between them, to her round belly, her arched flanks. Her
hips were flat, her legs round, her calf large; she had a slender
ankle, a lean and arched foot. Such she was as I saw her, and
that which her chemise hid was not of less worth." (Houdoy, _La
Beaute des Femmes_, p. 125, who quotes the original of this
passage, considers it the ideal model of the mediaeval woman.)

In the twelfth century story of _Aucassin et Nicolette_,
"Nicolette had fair hair, delicate and curling; her eyes were
gray (_vairs_) and smiling; her face admirably modeled. Her nose
was high and well placed; her lips small and more vermilion than
the cherry or the rose in summer; her teeth were small and white;
her firm little breasts raised her dress as would two walnuts.
Her figure was so slender that you could inclose it with your two
hands, and the flowers of the marguerite, which her toes broke as
she walked with naked feet, seemed black in comparison with her
feet and legs, so white was she."

"Her hair was divided into a double tress," says Alain of Lille
in the twelfth century, "which was long enough to kiss the
ground; the parting, white as the lily and obliquely traced,
separated the hair, and this want of symmetry, far from hurting
her face, was one of the elements of her beauty. A golden comb
maintained that abundant hair whose brilliance rivaled it, so
that the fascinated eye could scarce distinguish the gold of the
hair from the gold of the comb. The expanded forehead had the
whiteness of milk, and rivaled the lily; her bright eyebrows
shone like gold, not standing up in a brush, and, without being
too scanty, orderly arranged. The eyes, serene and brilliant in
their friendly light, seemed twin stars, her nostrils embalsamed
with the odor of honey, neither too depressed in shape nor too
prominent, were of distinguished form; the nard of her mouth
offered to the smell a treat of sweet odors, and her half-open
lips invited a kiss. The teeth seemed cu