ery maternal manner, "I shall be anxious about her future life.
Louise is so very romantic."

"It is so difficult nowadays," said a venerable Cardinal, "to reconcile
feeling with the proprieties."

Lucien, who had not a word to say, went to the tea-table to do what was
polite to the demoiselles de Grandlieu. When the poet had gone a few
yards away, the Marquise d'Espard leaned over to whisper in the Duchess'
ear:

"And do you really think that that young fellow is so much in love with
your Clotilde?"

The perfidy of this question cannot be fully understood but with the
help of a sketch of Clotilde. That young lady was, at this moment,
standing up. Her attitude allowed the Marquise d'Espard's mocking eye to
take in Clotilde's lean, narrow figure, exactly like an asparagus stalk;
the poor girl's bust was so flat that it did not allow of the artifice
known to dressmakers as _fichus menteurs_, or padded habitshirts. And
Clotilde, who knew that her name was a sufficient advantage in life, far
from trying to conceal this defect, heroically made a display of it. By
wearing plain, tight dresses she achieved the effect of that stiff prim
shape which medieval sculptors succeeded in giving to the statuettes
whose profiles are conspicuous against the background of the niches in
which they stand in cathedrals.

Clotilde was more than five feet four in height; if we may be allowed
to use a familiar phrase, which has the merit at any rate of being
perfectly intelligible--she was all legs. These defective proportions
gave her figure an almost deformed appearance. With a dark complexion,
harsh black hair, very thick eyebrows, fiery eyes, set in sockets that
were already deeply discolored, a side face shaped like the moon in
its first quarter, and a prominent brow, she was the caricature of her
mother, one of the handsomest women in Portugal. Nature amuses herself
with such tricks. Often we see in one family a sister of wonderful
beauty, whose features in her brother are absolutely hideous, though the
two are amazingly alike. Clotilde's lips, excessively thin and sunken,
wore a permanent expression of disdain. And yet her mouth, better than
any other feature of her face, revealed every secret impulse of her
heart, for affection lent it a sweet expression, which was all the more
remarkable because her cheeks were too sallow for blushes, and her
hard, black eyes never told anything. Notwithstanding these defects,
notwithstanding her