the homeliest style of the peasants to whom it had belonged. We went up
stairs. A few objects of higher taste were to be seen in the apartment
to which we were now ushered--a pendule, a piano, and one or two
portraits superbly framed, and with ducal coronets above them. But, to
my great embarrassment, the room was full, and full of the first names
of France. Yet the whole assemblage were female, and the glance which
the Duchess cast from her fauteuil, as I followed my rather startled
guide into the room, showed me that I had committed some terrible
solecism, in intruding on the party. On what mysteries had I ventured,
and what was to be the punishment of my temerity in the very shrine of
the Bona Dea? My pretty guide, on finding herself with all those dark
eyes fixed on her, and all those stately features looking something
between sorrow and surprise, faltered, and grew alternately red and
pale. We were both on the point of retiring; when the Duchess, after a
brief consultation with some of the surrounding matronage, made a sign
to Mariamne to approach. Her hospitality to all the emigrant families
had undoubtedly given her a claim on their attentions. The result was a
most gracious smile from Madame la Presidente, and I took my seat in
silence and submission.

"Is France a country of female beauty?" is a question which I have often
heard, and which I have always answered by a recollection of this scene.
I never saw so many handsome women together, before or since. All were
not Venuses, it is true; but there was an expression, almost a mould of
feature, universal, which struck the eye more than beauty. It was
impossible to doubt that I was among a high _caste_; there was a general
look of nobleness, a lofty yet feminine grace of countenance, a stately
sweetness, which are involuntarily connected with high birth, high
manners, and high history.

There were some whose fine regularity of feature might have served as
the model for a Greek sculptor. Yet those were not the faces on which
the eye rested with the long and deep delight that "drinks in beauty." I
saw some worthy or the sublime spell of Vandyke, more with the
magnificence of style which Reynolds loved, and still more with the
subdued dignity and touching elegance of which Lawrence was so charming
a master.

On my return to French society in after years, I was absolutely
astonished at the change which seemed to me to have taken place in the
beauty of high life.