ossoms with all the
freedom of a child in his cradle or a fallow deer in the forest. Made as
she was, she had no difficulty in dressing well; the simplest costumes
fitted her person with an elegant precision that caused the Baroness de
Pers to say in her inaccurate though expressive language:

"A pair of kid gloves would be enough to dress her with."

During that same day and those that followed, Julia conquered new titles
to Monsieur de Lucan's good graces, by manifesting a strong liking for the
chateau of Vastville and the surrounding sites. The chateau pleased her
for its romantic style, its old-fashioned garden ornamented with yews and
evergreens, the lonely avenues of the park, and its melancholy woods
scattered with ruins. She went into ecstasies at the sight of the vast
heather plains lashed by the ocean winds, the trees with twisted and
convulsive tops, the tall granite cliffs worn by the everlasting waves.

"All that," she said, laughingly, "has a great deal of character;" and as
she had a great deal of it herself, she felt in her element. She had found
the home of her dreams, she was happy.

Her mother, to whom she paid up in passionate effusions all arrearages of
tenderness, was still more so.

The greater part of the day was spent riding about on horseback. After
dinner, Julia, with that joyous and somewhat feverish spirit that animated
her, related her travels, parodying in a good-natured manner her own
enthusiasm and her husband's relative indifference in presence of the
masterpieces of antique art. She illustrated these recollections with
scenes of mimicry in which she displayed the skill of a fairy, the
imagination of an artist, and sometimes the broad humor of a low comedian.
In a turn of the hand, with a flower, a bit of silk, a sheet of paper, she
composed a Neapolitan, Roman, or Sicilian head-dress. She performed scenes
from ballets or operas, pushing back the train of her dress with a tragic
sweep of her foot, and accentuating strongly the commonplace exclamations
of Italian lyricism:

"Oh, Ciel! Crudel! Perfido! Oh, dio! Perdona!"

Or else, kneeling on an arm-chair, she imitated the voice and manner of a
preacher she had heard in Rome, and who did not seem to have sufficiently
edified her.

Through all these various performances she never lost a particle of her
grace, and her most comical attitudes retained a certain elegance.

After all these frolics she would resume her expression of a l