beside mere symmetry of feature go to make up the Cytherea of the hour.
--tact in society--the charm of manner--nameless and piquant
brilliancy. Where the world find the Graces they proclaim the Venus.
Few persons attain pre-eminent celebrity for anything, without some
adventitious and extraneous circumstances which have nothing to do with
the thing celebrated. Some qualities or some circumstances throw a
mysterious or personal charm about them. "Is Mr. So-and-So really such
a genius?" "Is Mrs. Such-a-One really such a beauty?" you ask
incredulously. "Oh, yes," is the answer. "Do you know all about him or
her? Such a thing is said, or such a thing has happened." The idol is
interesting in itself, and therefore its leading and popular attribute
is worshipped.

Now Madame de Ventadour was at this time the beauty of Naples: and
though fifty women in the room were handsomer, no one would have dared
to say so. Even the women confessed her pre-eminence--for she was the
most perfect dresser that even France could exhibit. And to no
pretensions do ladies ever concede with so little demur, as those which
depend upon that feminine art which all study, and in which few excel.
Women never allow beauty in a face that has an odd-looking bonnet above
it, nor will they readily allow any one to be ugly whose caps are
unexceptionable. Madame de Ventadour had also the magic that results
from intuitive high breeding, polished by habit to the utmost. She
looked and moved the /grande dame/, as if Nature had been employed by
Rank to make her so. She was descended from one of the most illustrious
houses of France; had married at sixteen a man of equal birth, but old,
dull, and pompous--a caricature rather than a portrait of that great
French /noblesse/, now almost if not wholly extinct. But her virtue was
without a blemish--some said from pride, some said from coldness. Her
wit was keen and court-like--lively, yet subdued; for her French high