r the boldest eyelid. A Grecian
nose, designed it might be by Phidias, and united by its double arch to
lips that were gracefully curved, spiritualized the face, which was
oval with a skin of the texture of a white camellia colored with soft
rose-tints upon the cheeks. Her plumpness did not detract from the
grace of her figure nor from the rounded outlines which made her shape
beautiful though well developed. You will understand the character of
this perfection when I say that where the dazzling treasures which
had so fascinated me joined the arm there was no crease or wrinkle. No
hollow disfigured the base of her head, like those which make the necks
of some women resemble trunks of trees; her muscles were not harshly
defined, and everywhere the lines were rounded into curves as fugitive
to the eye as to the pencil. A soft down faintly showed upon her cheeks
and on the outline of her throat, catching the light which made it
silken. Her little ears, perfect in shape, were, as she said herself,
the ears of a mother and a slave. In after days, when our hearts were
one, she would say to me, "Here comes Monsieur de Mortsauf"; and she was
right, though I, whose hearing is remarkably acute, could hear nothing.

Her arms were beautiful. The curved fingers of the hand were long, and
the flesh projected at the side beyond the finger-nails, like those
of antique statues. I should displease you, I know, if you were not
yourself an exception to my rule, when I say that flat waists should
have the preference over round ones. The round waist is a sign of
strength; but women thus formed are imperious, self-willed, and more
voluptuous than tender. On the other hand, women with flat waists are
devoted in soul, delicately perceptive, inclined to sadness, more truly
woman than the other class. The flat waist is supple and yielding; the
round waist is inflexible and jealous.

You now know how she was made. She had the foot of a well-bred
woman,--the foot that walks little, is quickly tired, and delights the
eye when it peeps beneath the dress. Though she was the mother of two
children, I have never met any woman so truly a young girl as she. Her
whole air was one of simplicity, joined to a certain bashful dreaminess
which attracted others, just as a painter arrests our steps before a
figure into which his genius has conveyed a world of sentiment. If you
recall the pure, wild fragrance of the heath we gathered on our return
from the Villa