; for if the expression of a low and bad
passion render uncomely the most beautiful countenances, those which are
in themselves the most ugly are ennobled, on the contrary, by the
expression of good feelings and generous sentiments.

In a word, Adrienne was the most complete, the most ideal personification
of SENSUALITY--not of vulgar, ignorant, non intelligent, mistaken
sensuousness which is always deceit ful and corrupted by habit or by the
necessity for gross and ill-regulated enjoyments, but that exquisite
sensuality which is to the senses what intelligence is to the soul.

The independence of this young lady's character was extreme. Certain
humiliating subjections imposed upon her success by its social position,
above all things were revolting to her, and she had the hardihood to
resolve to withdraw herself from them. She was a woman, the most womanish
that it is possible to imagine--a woman in her timidity as well as in her
audacity--a woman in her hatred of the brutal despotism of men, as well
as in her intense disposition to self-devoting herself, madly even and
blindly, to him who should merit such a devotion from her--a woman whose
piquant wit was occasionally paradoxical--a superior woman, in brief, who
entertained a well-grounded disdain and contempt for certain men either
placed very high or greatly adulated, whom she had from time to time met
in the drawing-room of her aunt, the Princess Saint-Dizier, when she
resided with her.

These indispensable explanations being given, we usher, the reader into
the presence of Adrienne de Cardoville, who had just come out of the
bath.

It would require all the brilliant colorings of the Venetian school to
represent that charming scene, which would rather seem to have occurred
in the sixteenth century, in some palace of Florence or Bologna, than in
Paris, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, in the month of February, 1832.

Adrienne's dressing-room was a kind of miniature temple seemingly one
erected and dedicated to the worship of beauty, in gratitude to the Maker
who has lavished so many charms upon woman, not to be neglected by her,
or to cover and conceal them with ashes, or to destroy them by the
contact of her person with sordid and harsh haircloth; but in order that,
with fervent gratitude for the divine gifts wherewith she is endowed, she
may enhance her charms with all the illusions of grace and all the
splendors of apparel, so as to glorify the divine work of h