epresenting beautiful women.
It often happened that in the illustrated papers, in the mythological
engravings of our dining-room, or in a shop-window, that a beautiful
face, or a harmonious and graceful figure attracted my precociously
artistic gaze. But the miniature encountered in my aunt's drawer,
apart from its great beauty, appeared to me as if animated by a subtle
and vital breath; you could see it was not the caprice of a painter,
but the image of a real and actual person of flesh and blood. The warm
and rich tone of the tints made you surmise that the blood was tepid
beneath that mother-of-pearl skin. The lips were slightly parted to
disclose the enameled teeth; and to complete the illusion there ran
round the frame a border of natural hair, chestnut in color, wavy and
silky, which had grown on the temples of the original.

As I have said, it was more than a copy, it was the reflection of a
living person from whom I was only separated by a wall of glass.--I
seized it, breathed upon it, and it seemed to me that the warmth of
the mysterious deity communicated itself to my lips and circulated
through my veins. At this moment I heard footsteps in the corridor. It
was my aunt returning from her prayers. I heard her asthmatic cough,
and the dragging of her gouty feet. I had only just time to put the
miniature into the drawer, shut it, and approach the window, adopting
an innocent and indifferent attitude.

My aunt entered noisily, for the cold of the church had exasperated
her catarrh, now chronic. Upon seeing me, her wrinkled eyes
brightened, and giving me a friendly tap with her withered hand, she
asked me if I had been turning over her drawers as usual.

Then, with a chuckle:

"Wait a bit, wait a bit," she added, "I have something for you,
something you will like."

And she pulled out of her vast pocket a paper bag, and out of the bag
three or four gum lozenges, sticking together in a cake, which gave me
a feeling of nausea.

My aunt's appearance did not invite one to open one's mouth and devour
these sweets: the course of years, her loss of teeth, her eyes dimmed
to an unusual degree, the sprouting of a mustache or bristles on her
sunken-in mouth, which was three inches wide, dull gray locks
fluttering above her sallow temples, a neck flaccid and livid as the
crest of the turkey when in a good temper.--In short, I did not take
the lozenges. Ugh! A feeling of indignation, a manly protest rose in
me, and I s