face. The firm, cold carriage of the head is corrected by the mobility
of the lips, their changing expression, and the artistic play of the
nostrils.

And yet, in spite of all these promises--hidden, perhaps, from the
profane--the calm of that countenance has something, I know not what,
that is vexatious. More sad, more serious than gracious, that face is
marked by the melancholy of constant meditation. For this reason
Mademoiselle des Touches listens more than she talks. She startles by
her silence and by that deep-reaching glance of intense fixity. No
educated person could see her without thinking of Cleopatra, that dark
little woman who almost changed the face of the world. But in Camille
the natural animal is so complete, so self-sufficing, of a nature so
leonine, that a man, however little of a Turk he may be, regrets the
presence of so great a mind in such a body, and could wish that she
were wholly woman. He fears to find the strange distortion of an
abnormal soul. Do not cold analysis and matter-of-fact theory point to
passions in such a woman? Does she judge, and not feel? Or, phenomenon
more terrible, does she not feel and judge at one and the same time?
Able for all things through her brain, ought her course to be
circumscribed by the limitations of other women? Has that intellectual
strength weakened her heart? Has she no charm? Can she descend to
those tender nothings by which a woman occupies, and soothes and
interests the man she loves? Will she not cast aside a sentiment when
it no longer responds to some vision of infinitude which she grasps
and contemplates in her soul? Who can scale the heights to which her
eyes have risen? Yes, a man fears to find in such a woman something
unattainable, unpossessable, unconquerable. The woman of strong mind
should remain a symbol; as a reality she must be feared. Camille
Maupin is in some ways the living image of Schiller's Isis, seated in