glistened when the light fell upon them; and her vermeil
mouth voluptuously sensual, seemed to call for sweet kisses, and the
gay smiles and delectations of dainty and delicious pleasure. It is
impossible to behold or to conceive a carriage of the head freer, more
noble, or more elegant than hers; thanks to the great distance which
separated the neck and the ear from their attachment to her outspread
and dimpled shoulders. We have already said that Adrienne was
red-haired; but it was the redness of many of the admirable portraits
of women by Titian and Leonardo da Vinci,--that is to say, molten gold
presents not reflections more delightfully agreeable or more glittering,
than the naturally undulating mass of her very long hair, as soft and
fine as silk, so long, that, when let loose, it reached the floor; in
it, she could wholly envelop herself, like another Venus arising from
the sea. At the present moment, Adrienne's tresses were ravishing to
behold; Georgette, her arms bare, stood behind her mistress, and had
carefully collected into one of her small white hands, those splendid
threads whose naturally ardent brightness was doubled in the sunshine.
When the pretty lady's-maid pulled a comb of ivory into the midst of
the undulating and golden waves of that enormously magnificent skein of
silk, one might have said that a thousand sparks of fire darted forth
and coruscated away from it in all directions. The sunshine, too,
reflected not less golden and fiery rays from numerous clusters of
spiral ringlets, which, divided upon Adrienne's forehead, fell over her
cheeks, and in their elastic flexibility caressed the risings of her
snowy bosom, to whose charming undulations they adapted and applied
themselves. Whilst Georgette, standing, combed the beautiful locks of
her mistress, Hebe, with one knee upon the floor, and having upon
the other the sweet little foot of Miss Cardoville, busied herself in
fitting it with a remarkably small shoe of black satin, and crossed its
slender ties over a silk stocking of a pale yet rosy flesh color, which
imprisoned the smallest and finest ankle in the world. Florine, a little
farther back, presented to her mistress, in a jeweled box, a perfumed
paste, with which Adrienne slightly rubbed her dazzling hands
and outspread fingers, which seemed tinted with carmine to their
extremities. Let us not forget Frisky, who, couched in the lap of
her mistress, opened her great eyes with all her might, a