faintest color to the centre of the cheeks, where it goes away almost
immediately. This peculiarity gives to her face the calm impassibility
of the savage. The face, more long than oval, resembles that of some
beautiful Isis in the Egyptian bas-reliefs; it has the purity of the
heads of sphinxes, polished by the fire of the desert, kissed by a
Coptic sun. The tones of the skin are in harmony with the faultless
modelling of the head. The black and abundant hair descends in heavy
masses beside the throat, like the coif of the statues at Memphis, and
carries out magnificently the general severity of form. The forehead
is full, broad, and swelling about the temples, illuminated by
surfaces which catch the light, and modelled like the brow of the
hunting Diana, a powerful and determined brow, silent and
self-contained. The arch of the eye-brows, vigorously drawn, surmounts
a pair of eyes whose flame scintillates at times like that of a fixed
star. The white of the eye is neither bluish, nor strewn with scarlet
threads, nor is it purely white; it has the texture of horn, but the
tone is warm. The pupil is surrounded by an orange circle; it is of
bronze set in gold, but vivid gold and animated bronze. This pupil
has depth; it is not underlaid, as in certain eyes, by a species of
foil, which sends back the light and makes such eyes resemble those of
cats or tigers; it has not that terrible inflexibility which makes a
sensitive person shudder; but this depth has in it something of the
infinite, just as the external radiance of the eyes suggests the
absolute. The glance of an observer may be lost in that soul, which
gathers itself up and retires with as much rapidity as it gushed for a
second into those velvet eyes. In moments of passion the eyes of
Camille Maupin are sublime; the gold of her glance illuminates them
and they flame. But in repose they are dull; the torpor of meditation
often lends them an appearance of stupidity[*]; in like manner, when
the glow of the soul is absent the lines of the face are sad.