conversations began, as varied in character as the speakers. They broke
up into groups. It might have been a fashionable drawing-room where
ladies and young girls offer after dinner the assistance that coffee,
liqueurs, and sugar afford to diners who are struggling in the toils
of a perverse digestion. But in a little while laughter broke out,
the murmur grew, and voices were raised. The saturnalia, subdued for a
moment, threatened at times to renew itself. The alternations of sound
and silence bore a distant resemblance to a symphony of Beethoven's.

The two friends, seated on a silken divan, were first approached by
a tall, well-proportioned girl of stately bearing; her features were
irregular, but her face was striking and vehement in expression, and
impressed the mind by the vigor of its contrasts. Her dark hair fell
in luxuriant curls, with which some hand seemed to have played havoc
already, for the locks fell lightly over the splendid shoulders that
thus attracted attention. The long brown curls half hid her queenly
throat, though where the light fell upon it, the delicacy of its fine
outlines was revealed. Her warm and vivid coloring was set off by the
dead white of her complexion. Bold and ardent glances came from under
the long eyelashes; the damp, red, half-open lips challenged a kiss. Her
frame was strong but compliant; with a bust and arms strongly developed,
as in figures drawn by the Caracci, she yet seemed active and elastic,
with a panther's strength and suppleness, and in the same way the
energetic grace of her figure suggested fierce pleasures.

But though she might romp perhaps and laugh, there was something
terrible in her eyes and her smile. Like a pythoness possessed by the
demon, she inspired awe rather than pleasure. All changes, one after
another, flashed like lightning over every mobile feature of her face.
She might captivate a jaded fancy, but a young man would have feared
her. She was like some colossal statue fallen from the height of a Greek
temple, so grand when seen afar, too roughly hewn to be seen anear.
And yet, in spite of all, her terrible beauty could have stimulated
exhaustion; her voice might charm the deaf; her glances might put life
into the bones of the dead; and therefore Emile was vaguely reminded of
one of Shakespeare's tragedies--a wonderful maze, in which joy
groans, and there is something wild even about love, and the magic of
forgiveness and the warmth of happiness su