"The Comtesse de Camors, formerly Marie de Tecle, is a personage who, having reached her twentieth year, looks older. She is not beautiful, as her husband is the first person to confess. He says she is pretty; but she doubts even this. Let us see. She has very long limbs, a fault which she shares with Diana, the Huntress, and which probably gives to the gait of the Countess a lightness it might not otherwise possess. Her body is naturally short, and on horseback appears to best advantage. She is plump without being gross.
"Her features are irregular; the mouth being too large and the lips too thick, with—alas! the shade of a moustache; white teeth, a little too small; a commonplace nose, a slightly pug; and her mother's eyes—her best feature. She has the eyebrows of her Uncle Des Rameures, which gives an air of severity to the face and neutralizes the good-natured expression-a reflex from the softness of her heart.
"She has the dark complexion of her mother, which is more becoming to her mother than to her. Add to all this, blue-black hair in great silky masses. On the whole, one knows not what to pronounce her.
"There, my mother, is my portrait! Intended to reassure me, it has hardly done so; for it seems to me to be that of an ugly little woman!
"I wish to be the most lively of women; I wish to be one of the most distinguished. I wish to be one of the most captivating! But, oh, my mother! if I please him I am still more enchanted! On the whole, thank God! he finds me perhaps much better than I am: for men have not the same taste in these matters that we have.
"But what I really can not comprehend, is why he has so little admiration for the Marquise de Campvallon. His manner is very cold to her. Were I a man, I should be wildly in love with that superb woman! Good-night, most beloved of mothers!
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"January.
"You complain of me, my cherished one! The tone of my letters wounds you! You can not comprehend how this matter of my personal appearance haunts me. I scrutinize it; I compare it with that of others. There is something of levity in that which hurts you? You ask how can I think a man attaches himself to these things, while the merits of mind and soul go for nothing?
"But, my dearest mother, how will these merits of mind and of soul —supposing your daughter to possess them—serve her, unless she possesses the courage or has the opportunity to display them? And when I summon up the courage, it seems to me the occasion never comes.