f her second child. She had exactly the hair and the foot for which the
Duchesse de Berri was so famous, hair so thick that no hairdresser
could gather it into his hand, and so long that it fell to the ground in
rings; for Esther was of that medium height which makes a woman a sort
of toy, to be taken up and set down, taken up again and carried without
fatigue. Her skin, as fine as rice-paper, of a warm amber hue showing
the purple veins, was satiny without dryness, soft without being clammy.

Esther, excessively strong though apparently fragile, arrested attention
by one feature that is conspicuous in the faces in which Raphael has
shown his most artistic feeling, for Raphael is the painter who has
most studied and best rendered Jewish beauty. This remarkable effect was
produced by the depth of the eye-socket, under which the eye moved free
from its setting; the arch of the brow was so accurate as to resemble
the groining of a vault. When youth lends this beautiful hollow its pure
and diaphanous coloring, and edges it with closely-set eyebrows, when
the light stealing into the circular cavity beneath lingers there with a
rosy hue, there are tender treasures in it to delight a lover, beauties
to drive a painter to despair. Those luminous curves, where the shadows
have a golden tone, that tissue as firm as a sinew and as mobile as the
most delicate membrane, is a crowning achievement of nature. The eye at
rest within is like a miraculous egg in a nest of silken wings. But as
time goes on this marvel acquires a dreadful melancholy, when passions
have laid dark smears on those fine forms, when grief had furrowed that
network of delicate veins. Esther's nationality proclaimed itself in
this Oriental modeling of her eyes with their Turkish lids; their color
was a slate-gray which by night took on the blue sheen of a raven's
wing. It was only the extreme tenderness of her expression that could
moderate their fire.

Only those races that are native to deserts have in the eye the power
of fascinating everybody, for any woman can fascinate some one person.
Their eyes preserve, no doubt, something of the infinitude they have
gazed on. Has nature, in her foresight, armed their retina with some
reflecting background to enable them to endure the mirage of the sand,
the torrents of sunshine, and the burning cobalt of the sky? or,
do human beings, like other creatures, derive something from the
surroundings among which they grow up, a