Descriptions of women:
The old doctor's imagination wanders:
Coming home one day from his professional round, the malignant and
vicious old man came across a bewitching little girl at the edge of
some fields that lay along the avenue de Tivoli. Hearing the horse,
the child sprang up from the bottom of one of the many brooks which
are to be seen from the heights of Issoudun, threading the meadows
like ribbons of silver on a green robe. Naiad-like, she rose suddenly
on the doctor\'s vision, showing the loveliest virgin head that
painters ever dreamed of. Old Rouget, who knew the whole country-side,
did not know this miracle of beauty. The child, who was half naked,
wore a forlorn little petticoat of coarse woollen stuff, woven in
alternate strips of brown and white, full of holes and very ragged. A
sheet of rough writing paper, tied on by a shred of osier, served her
for a hat. Beneath this paper--covered with pot-hooks and round O\'s,
from which it derived the name of "schoolpaper"--the loveliest mass of
blonde hair that ever a daughter of Eve could have desired, was
twisted up, and held in place by a species of comb made to comb out
the tails of horses. Her pretty tanned bosom, and her neck, scarcely
covered by a ragged fichu which was once a Madres handkerchief, showed
edges of the white skin below the exposed and sun-burned parts. One
end of her petticoat was drawn between the legs and fastened with a
huge pin in front, giving that garment the look of a pair of bathing
drawers. The feet and the legs, which could be seen through the clear
water in which she stood, attracted the eye by a delicacy which was
worthy of a sculptor of the middle ages. The charming limbs exposed to
the sun had a ruddy tone that was not without beauty of its own. The
neck and bosom were worthy of being wrapped in silks and cashmeres;
and the nymph had blue eyes fringed with long lashes, whose glance
might have made a painter or a poet fall upon his knees. The doctor,
enough of an anatomist to trace the exquisite figure, recognized the
loss it would be to art if the lines of such a model were destroyed by
the hard toil of the fields.
A similar description from Modeste Mignon:
You have seen the cage; behold the bird! Just twenty years of age,
slender and delicate as the sirens which English designers invent for
their "Books of Beauty," Modeste was, like her mother before her, the
captivating embodiment of a grace too little understood in France,
where we choose to call it sentimentality, but which among German
women is the poetry of the heart coming to the surface of the being
and spending itself--in affectations if the owner is silly, in divine
charms of manner if she is "spirituelle" and intelligent. Remarkable
for her pale golden hair, Modeste belonged to the type of woman
called, perhaps in memory of Eve, the celestial blonde; whose satiny
skin is like a silk paper applied to the flesh, shuddering at the
winter of a cold look, expanding in the sunshine of a loving glance,--
teaching the hand to be jealous of the eye. Beneath her hair, which
was soft and feathery and worn in many curls, the brow, which might
have been traced by a compass so pure was its modelling, shone forth
discreet, calm to placidity, and yet luminous with thought: when and
where could another be found so transparently clear or more
exquisitely smooth? It seemed, like a pearl, to have its orient. The
eyes, of a blue verging on gray and limpid as the eyes of a child, had
all the mischief, all the innocence of childhood, and they harmonized
well with the arch of the eyebrows, faintly indicated by lines like
those made with a brush on Chinese faces. This candor of the soul was
still further evidenced around the eyes, in their corners, and about
the temples, by pearly tints threaded with blue, the special privilege
of these delicate complexions. The face, whose oval Raphael so often
gave to his Madonnas, was remarkable for the sober and virginal tone
of the cheeks, soft as a Bengal rose, upon which the long lashes of
the diaphanous eyelids cast shadows that were mingled with light. The
throat, bending as she worked, too delicate perhaps, and of milky
whiteness, recalled those vanishing lines that Leonardo loved. A few
little blemishes here and there, like the patches of the eighteenth
century, proved that Modeste was indeed a child of earth, and not a
creation dreamed of in Italy by the angelic school. Her lips, delicate
yet full, were slightly mocking and somewhat sensuous; the waist,
which was supple and yet not fragile, had no terrors for maternity,
like those of girls who seek beauty by the fatal pressure of a corset.
Steel and dimity and lacings defined but did not create the serpentine
lines of the elegant figure, graceful as that of a young poplar
swaying in the wind.
Yet another woman:
She was now twenty-eight,--the age at which the beauties of a French
woman are in their glory. Painters particularly admired the lustre of
her white shoulders, tinted with olive tones about the nape of the
neck, and wonderfully firm and polished, so that the light shimmered
over them as it does on watered silk. When she turned her head, superb
folds formed about her neck, the admiration of sculptors. She carried
on this triumphant neck the small head of a Roman empress, the
delicate, round, and self-willed head of Pompeia, with features of
elegant correctness, and the smooth forehead of a woman who drives all
care away and all reflection, who yields easily, but is capable of
balking like a mule, and incapable at such times of listening to
reason. That forehead, turned, as it were, with one cut of the chisel,
brought out the beauty of the golden hair, which was raised in front,
after the Roman fashion, in two equal masses, and twisted up behind
the head to prolong the line of the neck, and enhance that whiteness
by its beautiful color. Black and delicate eyebrows, drawn by a
Chinese brush, encircled the soft eyelids, which were threaded with
rosy fibres. The pupils of the eyes, extremely bright, though striped
with brown rays, gave to her glance the cruel fixity of a beast of
prey, and betrayed the cold maliciousness of the courtesan. The eyes
were gray, fringed with black lashes,--a charming contrast, which made
their expression of calm and contemplative voluptuousness the more
observable; the circle round the eyes showed marks of fatigue, but the
artistic manner in which she could turn her eyeballs, right and left,
or up and down, to observe, or seem to mediate, the way in which she
could hold them fixed, casting out their vivid fire without moving her
head, without taking from her face its absolute immovability (a
manoeuvre learned upon the stage), and the vivacity of their glance,
as she looked about a theatre in search of a friend, made her eyes the
most terrible, also the softest, in short, the most extraordinary eyes
in the world. Rouge had destroyed by this time the diaphanous tints of
her cheeks, the flesh of which was still delicate; but although she
could no longer blush or turn pale, she had a thin nose with rosy,
passionate nostrils, made to express irony,--the mocking irony of
Moliere\'s women-servants. Her sensual mouth, expressive of sarcasm and
love of dissipation, was adorned with a deep furrow that united the
upper lip with the nose. Her chin, white and rather fat, betrayed the
violence of passion. Her hands and arms were worthy of a sovereign.....
A Countess:
What a handsome woman it was that I saw in
another moment! She had flung an Indian shawl hastily over her bare
shoulders, covering herself with it completely, while it revealed the
bare outlines of the form beneath. She wore a loose gown trimmed with
snowy ruffles, which told plainly that her laundress\' bills amounted
to something like two thousand francs in the course of a year. Her
dark curls escaped from beneath a bright Indian handkerchief, knotted
carelessly about her head after the fashion of Creole women. The bed
lay in disorder that told of broken slumber. A painter would have paid
money to stay a while to see the scene that I saw. Under the luxurious
hanging draperies, the pillow, crushed into the depths of an eider-
down quilt, its lace border standing out in contrast against the
background of blue silk, bore a vague impress that kindled the
imagination. A pair of satin slippers gleamed from the great bear-skin
rug spread by the carved mahogany lions at the bed-foot, where she had
flung them off in her weariness after the ball. A crumpled gown hung
over a chair, the sleeves touching the floor; stockings which a breath
would have blown away were twisted about the leg of an easy-chair;
while ribbon garters straggled over a settee. A fan of price, half
unfolded, glittered on the chimney-piece. Drawers stood open; flowers,
diamonds, gloves, a bouquet, a girdle, were littered about. The room
was full of vague sweet perfume. And--beneath all the luxury and
disorder, beauty and incongruity, I saw Misery crouching in wait for
her or for her adorer, Misery rearing its head, for the Countess had
begun to feel the edge of those fangs. Her tired face was an epitome
of the room strewn with relics of past festival. The scattered
gewgaws, pitiable this morning, when gathered together and coherent,
had turned heads the night before.
A young mother from La Grenadiere:
Mme. Willemsens was rather tall; she was thin and slender, but
delicately shaped. She had pretty feet, more remarkable for the grace
of her instep and ankle than for the more ordinary merit of
slenderness; her gloved hands, too, were shapely. There were flitting
patches of deep red in a pale face, which must have been fresh and
softly colored once. Premature wrinkles had withered the delicately
modeled forehead beneath the coronet of soft, well-set chestnut hair,
invariably wound about her head in two plaits, a girlish coiffure
which suited the melancholy face. There was a deceptive look of calm
in the dark eyes, with the hollow, shadowy circles about them;
sometimes, when she was off her guard, their expression told of secret
anguish. The oval of her face was somewhat long; but happiness and
health had perhaps filled and perfected the outlines. A forced smile,
full of quiet sadness, hovered continually on her pale lips; but when
the children, who were always with her, looked up at their mother, or
asked one of the incessant idle questions which convey so much to a
mother\'s ears, then the smile brightened, and expressed the joys of a
mother\'s love. Her gait was slow and dignified. Her dress never
varied; evidently she had made up her mind to think no more of her
toilette, and to forget a world by which she meant no doubt to be
forgotten. She wore a long, black gown, confined at the waist by a
watered-silk ribbon, and by way of scarf a lawn handkerchief with a
broad hem, the two ends passed carelessly through her waistband. The
instinct of dress showed itself in that she was daintily shod, and
gray silk stockings carried out the suggestion of mourning in this
unvarying costume. Lastly, she always wore a bonnet after the English
fashion, always of the same shape and the same gray material, and a
black veil. Her health apparently was extremely weak; she looked very
ill. On fine evenings she would take her only walk, down to the bridge
of Tours, bringing the two children with her to breathe the fresh,
cool air along the Loire, and to watch the sunset effects on a
landscape as wide as the Bay of Naples or the Lake of Geneva.
The "deep seraphic beauty of the Catholic Church,
supple and rigid, severe but tender." (from "The Hated Son"):
Gabrielle\'s face was thin, but not flat; on her neck and forehead ran
bluish threads showing the delicacy of a skin so transparent that the
flowing of the blood through her veins seemed visible. This excessive
whiteness was faintly tinted with rose upon the cheeks. Held beneath a
little coif of sky-blue velvet embroidered with pearls, her hair, of
an even tone, flowed like two rivulets of gold from her temples and
played in ringlets on her neck, which it did not hide. The glowing
color of those silky locks brightened the dazzling whiteness of the
neck, and purified still further by its reflections the outlines of
the face already so pure. The eyes, which were long and as if pressed
between their lids, were in harmony with the delicacy of the head and
body; their pearl-gray tints were brilliant without vivacity, candid
without passion. The line of the nose might have seemed cold, like a
steel blade, without two rosy nostrils, the movements of which were
out of keeping with the chastity of that dreamy brow, often perplexed,
sometimes smiling, but always of an august serenity. An alert little
ear attracted the eye, peeping beneath the coif and between two curls,
and showing a ruby ear-drop, the color of which stood vigorously out
on the milky whiteness of the neck. This was neither Norman beauty,
where flesh abounds, nor French beauty, as fugitive as its own
expressions, nor the beauty of the North, cold and melancholy as the
North itself--it was the deep seraphic beauty of the Catholic Church,
supple and rigid, severe but tender.
A woman in the market (from "The Lesser Bourgeoisie") :
The woman was mounted on muddy sabots; but her feet, carefully wrapped
in gaiters, were still further protected by stout and thick-ribbed
stockings. Her cotton gown, adorned with a glounce of mud, bore the
imprint of the strap which supported the fish-basket. Her principal
garment was a shawl of what was called "rabbit\'s-hair cashmere," the
two ends of which were knotted behind, above her bustle--for we must
needs employ a fashionable word to express the effect produced by the
transversal pressure of the basket upon her petticoats, which
projected below it, in shape like a cabbage. A printed cotton
neckerchief, of the coarsest description, gave to view a red neck,
ribbed and lined like the surface of a pond where people have skated.
Her head was covered in a yellow silk foulard, twined in a manner that
was rather picturesque. Short and stout, and ruddy of skin, Mere
Cardinal probably drank her little drop of brandy in the morning. She
had once been handsome. The Halle had formerly reproached her, in the
boldness of its figurative speech, for doing "a double day\'s-work in
the twenty-four." Her voice, in order to reduce itself to the diapason
of ordinary conversation, was obliged to stifle its sound as other
voices do in a sick-room; but at such times it came thick and muffled,
from a throat accustomed to send to the farthest recesses of the
highest garret the names of the fish in their season. Her nose, a la
Roxelane, her well-cut lips, her blue eyes, and all that formerly made
up her beauty, was now buried in folds of vigorous flesh which told of
the habits and occupations of an outdoor life. The stomach and bosom
were distinguished for an amplitude worthy of Rubens.
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