TOILET.

About an hour had elapsed since Mrs. Grivois had seen or pretended to
have seen Adrienne de Cardoville re-enter in the morning the extension
of Saint-Dizier House.

It is for the purpose, not of excusing, but of rendering intelligible,
the following scenes, that it is deemed necessary to bring out into the
light some striking peculiarities in the truly original character of
Miss de Cardoville.

This originality consisted in an excessive independence of mind, joined
to a natural horror of whatsoever is repulsive or deformed, and to
an insatiable desire of being surrounded by everything attractive and
beautiful. The painter most delighted with coloring and beauty, the
sculptor most charmed by proportions of form, feel not more than
Adrienne did the noble enthusiasm which the view of perfect beauty
always excites in the chosen favorites of nature.

And it was not only the pleasures of sight which this young lady
loved to gratify: the harmonious modulations of song, the melody of
instruments, the cadences of poetry, afforded her infinite pleasures;
while a harsh voice or a discordant noise made her feel the same painful
impression, or one nearly as painful as that which she involuntarily
experienced from the sight of a hideous object. Passionately fond of
flowers, too, and of their sweet scents, there are some perfumes which
she enjoyed equally with the delights of music or those of plastic
beauty. It is necessary, alas, to acknowledge one enormity: Adrienne was
dainty in her food! She valued more than any one else the fresh pulp
of handsome fruit, the delicate savor of a golden pheasant, cooked to a
turn, and the odorous cluster of a generous vine.

But Adrienne enjoyed all these pleasures with an exquisite reserve. She
sought religiously to cultivate and refine the senses given her. She
would have deemed it black ingratitude to blunt those divine gifts by
excesses, or to debase them by unworthy selections of objects upon which
to exercise them; a fault from which, indeed, she was preserved by the
excessive and imperious delicacy of her taste.

The BEAUTIFUL and the UGLY occupied for her the places which GOOD and
EVIL holds for others.

Her devotion to grace, elegance, and physical beauty, had led her also
to the adoration of moral beauty; for if the expression of a low and bad
passion render uncomely the most beautiful countenances, those which
are in themselves the most ugly are ennobled, on the contrar