long boots stuffed with cotton, to give
length, and the semblance of an instep. Her figure was of medium height,
threatened with corpulence, but still well-balanced, and well-made.

Morally, she was an adept in all the attitudinizing, quarrelling,
alluring, and cajoling of her business; and she gave to those actions a
savor of their own by playing childlike innocence, and slipping in among
her artless speeches philosophical malignities. Apparently ignorant and
giddy, she was very strong on money-matters and commercial law,--for the
reason that she had gone through so much misery before attaining to her
present precarious success. She had come down, story by story, from the
garret to the first floor, through so many vicissitudes! She knew life,
from that which begins in Brie cheese and ends at pineapples; from
that which cooks and washes in the corner of a garret on an earthenware
stove, to that which convokes the tribes of pot-bellied chefs and
saucemakers. She had lived on credit and not killed it; she was ignorant
of nothing that honest women ignore; she spoke all languages: she was
one of the populace by experience; she was noble by beauty and physical
distinction. Suspicious as a spy, or a judge, or an old statesman, she
was difficult to impose upon, and therefore the more able to see clearly
into most matters. She knew the ways of managing tradespeople, and how
to evade their snares, and she was quite as well versed in the prices of
things as a public appraiser. To see her lying on her sofa, like a young
bride, fresh and white, holding her part in her hand and learning it,
you would have thought her a child of sixteen, ingenuous, ignorant, and
weak, with no other artifice about her but her innocence. Let a creditor
contrive to enter, and she was up like a startled fawn, and swearing a
good round oath.

"Hey! my good fellow; your insolence is too dear an interest on the
money I owe you," she would say. "I am sick of seeing you. Send the
sheriff here; I'd prefer him to your silly face."

Florine gave charming dinners, concerts, and well-attended soirees,
where play ran high. Her female friends were all handsome; no old woman
had ever appeared within her precincts. She was not jealous; in fact,
she would have thought jealousy an admission of inferiority. She had
known Coralie and La Torpille in their lifetimes, and now knew Tullia,
Euphrasie, Aquilina, Madame du Val-Noble, Mariette,--those women who
pass through Pa