have been supposed that, like a princess in the Arabian Nights, Emilie
was rich enough and beautiful enough to choose from among all the
princes in the world. Her objections were each more preposterous than
the last: one had too thick knees and was bow-legged, another was
short-sighted, this one's name was Durand, that one limped, and almost
all were too fat. Livelier, more attractive, and gayer than ever after
dismissing two or three suitors, she rushed into the festivities of
the winter season, and to balls, where her keen eyes criticised the
celebrities of the day, delighted in encouraging proposals which she
invariably rejected.

Nature had bestowed on her all the advantages needed for playing the
part of Celimene. Tall and slight, Emilie de Fontaine could assume a
dignified or a frolicsome mien at her will. Her neck was rather long,
allowing her to affect beautiful attitudes of scorn and impertinence.
She had cultivated a large variety of those turns of the head and
feminine gestures, which emphasize so cruelly or so happily a hint of
a smile. Fine black hair, thick and strongly-arched eyebrows, lent her
countenance an expression of pride, to which her coquettish instincts
and her mirror had taught her to add terror by a stare, or gentleness
by the softness of her gaze, by the set of the gracious curve of her
lips, by the coldness or the sweetness of her smile. When Emilie meant
to conquer a heart, her pure voice did not lack melody; but she could
also give it a sort of curt clearness when she was minded to paralyze
a partner's indiscreet tongue. Her colorless face and alabaster brow
were like the limpid surface of a lake, which by turns is rippled by
the impulse of a breeze and recovers its glad serenity when the air is
still. More than one young man, a victim to her scorn, accused her of
acting a part; but she justified herself by inspiring her detractors
with the desire to please her, and then subjecting them to all her