bust has not developed as well, and the arms are thin. She has,
however, an easy carriage and manner, which redeems all such defects
and sets her beauties in full relief. Nature has given her that
princess air which can never be acquired; it becomes her, and reveals
at sudden moments the woman of high birth. Without being faultlessly
beautiful, or prettily pretty, she produces, when she chooses,
ineffaceable impressions. She has only to put on a gown of cherry
velvet with clouds of lace, and wreathe with roses that angelic hair
of hers, which resembles floods of light, and she becomes divine. If,
on some excuse or other, she could wear the costume of the time when
women had long, pointed bodices, rising, slim and slender, from
voluminous brocaded skirts with folds so heavy that they stood alone,
and could hide her arms in those wadded sleeves with ruffles, from
which the hand comes out like a pistil from a calyx, and could fling
back the curls of her head into the jewelled knot behind her head,
Beatrix would hold her own victoriously with ideal beauties like
/that/--"

And Felicite showed Calyste a fine copy of a picture by Mieris, in
which was a woman robed in white satin, standing with a paper in her
hand, and singing with a Brabancon seigneur, while a Negro beside them
poured golden Spanish wine into a goblet, and the old housekeeper in
the background arranged some biscuits.

"Fair women, blonds," said Camille, "have the advantage over us poor
brown things of a precious diversity; there are a hundred ways for a
blonde to charm, and only one for a brunette. Besides, blondes are
more womanly; we are too like men, we French brunettes--Well, well!"
she cried, "pray don't fall in love with Beatrix from the portrait I
am making of her, like that prince, I forget his name, in the Arabian