se clouds it is difficult to seize the contours, to fix the lines, to
ascertain the present and future influence, thus rendering intercourse
vague and unintelligible, filling it with an indefinable and hidden
terror, yet, at the same time, with an insinuating flattery. The strong
currents of genuine sympathy are always struggling to escape from the
weight of this external repression. The differing impulses of vanity,
love, and patriotism, in their threefold motives of action, are forever
hurtling against each other in all hearts, leading to inextricable
confusion of thought and feeling.

What mingling emotions are concentrated in the accidental meetings of
the Mazourka! It can surround, with its own enchantment, the lightest
emotion of the heart, while, through its magic, the most reserved,
transitory, and trivial rencounter appeals to the imagination. Could it
be otherwise in the presence of the women who give to this dance that
inimitable grace and suavity, for which, in less happy countries,
they struggle in vain? In very truth are not the Sclavic women utterly
incomparable? There are to be found among them those whose qualities and
virtues are so incontestable, so absolute, that they are acknowledged
by all ages, and by all countries. Such apparitions are always and
everywhere rare. The women of Poland are generally distinguished by an
originality full of fire. Parisians in their grace and culture, Eastern
dancing girls in their languid fire, they have perhaps preserved among
them, handed down from mother to daughter, the secret of the burning
love potions possessed in the seraglios. Their charms possess the
strange spell of Asiatic languor. With the flames of spiritual and
intellectual Houris in their lustrous eyes, we find the luxurious
indolence of the Sultana. Their manners caress without emboldening;
the grace of their languid movements is intoxicating; they allure by
a flexibility of form, which knows no restraint, save that of perfect
modesty, and which etiquette has never succeeded in robbing of its
willowy grace. They win upon us by those intonations of voice which
touch the heart, and fill the eye with tender tears; by those sudden and
graceful impulses which recall the spontaneity and beautiful timidity
of the gazelle. Intelligent, cultivated, comprehending every thing
with rapidity, skillful in the use of all they have acquired; they are
nevertheless as superstitious and fastidious as the lovely yet ignor