ultra-coquettish cap the face of a monkey of extreme ugliness, on which
a flat nose, fleshless as that of Death, is separated by a strong hairy
line from a mouth filled with false teeth, whence issue sounds like
the confused clacking of hunting-horns, you will have some difficulty
in understanding why the leading society of Soulanges (all the town,
in fact) thought this quasi-queen a beauty,--unless, indeed, you
remember the succinct statement recently made "ex professo," by one of
the cleverest women of our time, on the art of making her sex
beautiful by surrounding accessories.

As to accessories, in the first place, Madame Soudry was surrounded by
the magnificent gifts accumulated by her late mistress, which the
ex-Benedictine called "fructus belli." Then she made the most of her
ugliness by exaggerating it, and by assuming that indescribable air
and manner which belongs only to Parisian women, the secret of which
is known even to the most vulgar among them,--who are always more or
less mimics. She laced tight, wore an enormous bustle, also diamond
earrings, and her fingers were covered with rings. At the top of her
corsage, between two mounds of flesh well plastered with pearl-white,
shone a beetle made of topaz with a diamond head, the gift of dear
mistress,--a jewel renowned throughout the department. Like the late
dear mistress, she wore short sleeves and bare arms, and flirted an
ivory fan, painted by Boucher with two little rose-diamonds in the
handle.

When she went out Madame Soudry carried a parasol of the true
eighteenth-century style; that is to say, a tall cane at the end of
which opened a green sun-shade with a green fringe. When she walked
about the terrace a stranger on the high-road, seeing her from afar,
might have thought her one of Watteau's dames.