y, by the
expression of good feelings and generous sentiments.

In a word, Adrienne was the most complete, the most ideal
personification of SENSUALITY--not of vulgar, ignorant, non intelligent,
mistaken sensuousness which is always deceit ful and corrupted by habit
or by the necessity for gross and ill-regulated enjoyments, but that
exquisite sensuality which is to the senses what intelligence is to the
soul.

The independence of this young lady's character was extreme. Certain
humiliating subjections imposed upon her success by its social position,
above all things were revolting to her, and she had the hardihood
to resolve to withdraw herself from them. She was a woman, the most
womanish that it is possible to imagine--a woman in her timidity as well
as in her audacity--a woman in her hatred of the brutal despotism of
men, as well as in her intense disposition to self-devoting herself,
madly even and blindly, to him who should merit such a devotion from
her--a woman whose piquant wit was occasionally paradoxical--a superior
woman, in brief, who entertained a well-grounded disdain and contempt
for certain men either placed very high or greatly adulated, whom she
had from time to time met in the drawing-room of her aunt, the Princess
Saint-Dizier, when she resided with her.

These indispensable explanations being given, we usher, the reader into
the presence of Adrienne de Cardoville, who had just come out of the
bath.

It would require all the brilliant colorings of the Venetian school to
represent that charming scene, which would rather seem to have occurred
in the sixteenth century, in some palace of Florence or Bologna, than in
Paris, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, in the month of February, 1832.

Adrienne's dressing-room was a kind of miniature temple seemingly one
erected and dedicated to the worship of beauty, in gratitude to the
Maker who has lavished so many charms upon woman, not to be neglected by
her, or to cover and conceal them with ashes, or to destroy them by
the contact of her person with sordid and harsh haircloth; but in order
that, with fervent gratitude for the divine gifts wherewith she is
endowed, she may enhance her charms with all the illusions of grace and
all the splendors of apparel, so as to glorify the divine work of her
own perfections in the eyes of all. Daylight was admitted into this
semicircular apartment, through one of those double windows, contrived
for the preservation of he