ge his talents seemed in all their freshness. He painted a
plain woman; it was a speaking likeness, and in spite of that those who
only saw the portrait pronounced her to be a handsome woman.
Nevertheless, the most minute examination would not have revealed any
faithlessness to the original, but some imperceptible touches gave a real
but indefinite air of beauty to the whole. Whence does that magic art
take its source? One day, when he had been painting the plain-looking
"Mesdames de France," who on the canvas looked like two Aspasias, I asked
him the above question. He answered:--

"It is a magic which the god of taste distils from my brains through my
brushes. It is the divinity of Beauty whom all the world adores, and
which no one can define, since no one knows of what it consists. That
canvas shews you what a delicate shade there is between beauty and
ugliness; and nevertheless this shade seems an enormous difference to
those unacquainted with art."

The Greek painters made Venus, the goddess of beauty, squint-eyed, and
this odd idea has been praised by some; but these painters were certainly
in the wrong.

Two squinting eyes might be beautiful, but certainly not so beautiful as
if they did not squint, for whatever beauty they had could not proceed
from their deformity.

After this long digression, with which the reader may not be very well
pleased, it is time for me to return to my sweetheart. The tenth day of
my visit to Lausanne, I went to sup and sleep with my mistress, and that
night was the happiest I remember. In the morning, while we were taking
coffee with her mother, I observed that we seemed in no hurry to part. At
this, the mother, a woman of few words, took up the discourse in a polite
and dignified manner, and told me it was my duty to undeceive Lebel
before I left; and at the same time she gave me a letter she had had from
him the evening before. The worthy man begged her to remind me that if I
could not make up my mind to separate from her daughter before I left
Lausanne, it would be much more difficult for me to do so when I was
farther off; above all, if, as would probably be the case, she gave me a
living pledge of her love. He said that he had no thoughts of drawing
back from his word, but he should wish to be able to say that he had
taken his wife from her mother's hands.

When I had read the letter aloud, the worthy mother wept, and left us
alone. A moment's silence ensued, and with a sig