for nothing, any more than this hair. That is Lucrezia Borgian, spun
gold, and ought to take the world in its toils. I always wear these
thick, riotous curls round my temples and face; but the great braids
behind--oh, I'll uncoil them before my toilet is over.

Probably you felt all this before, but didn't know the secret of it.
Now, the traits being brought out, you perceive nothing wanting; the
thing is perfect, and you've a reason for it. Of course, with such an
organization, I'm not nervous. Nervous! I should as soon fancy a dish of
cream nervous. I am too rich for anything of the kind, permeated utterly
with a rare golden calm. Girls always suggest little similitudes to me:
there's that brunette beauty,--don't you taste mulled wine when you see
her? and thinking of yourself, did you ever feel green tea? and find me
in a crust of wild honey, the expressed essence of woods and flowers,
with its sweet satiety?--no, that's too cloying. I'm a deal more like
Mendelssohn's music,--what I know of it, for I can't distinguish
tunes,--you wouldn't suspect it,--but full harmonics delight me as they
do a wild beast; and so I'm like a certain adagio in B flat, that Papa
likes.

There now! you're perfectly shocked to hear me go on so about myself;
but you oughtn't to be. It isn't lawful for any one else, because praise
is intrusion; but if the rose please to open her heart to the moth, what
then? You know, too, I didn't make myself; it's no virtue to be so fair.
Louise couldn't speak so of herself: first place, because it wouldn't
be true; next place, she couldn't, if it were; and lastly, she made her
beauty by growing a soul in her eyes, I suppose,--what you call good.
I'm not good, of course; I wouldn't give a fig to be good. So
it's not vanity. It's on a far grander scale; a splendid
selfishness,--authorized, too; and papa and mamma brought me up to