"Here you are, gentlemen! Here is the picture you ordered!" (from the
tones of Bixiou's voice, he evidently was posing as a waiter.) "Finot,
attention, one has to pull at your mouth as a jarvie pulls at his
jade. In Madame Theodora Marguerite Wilhelmine Adolphus (of the firm
of Adolphus and Company, Manheim), relict of the late Baron
d'Aldrigger, you might expect to find a stout, comfortable German,
compact and prudent, with a fair complexion mellowed to the tint of
the foam on a pot of beer; and as to virtues, rich in all the
patriarchal good qualities that Germany possesses--in romances, that
is to say. Well there was not a gray hair in the frisky ringlets that
she wore on either side of her face; she was still as fresh and as
brightly colored on the cheek-bone as a Nuremberg doll; her eyes were
lively and bright; a closely-fitting bodice set off the slenderness of
her waist. Her brow and temples were furrowed by a few involuntary
wrinkles which, like Ninon, she would fain have banished from her head
to her heel, but they persisted in tracing their zigzags in the more
conspicuous place. The outlines of the nose had somewhat fallen away,
and the tip had reddened, and this was the more awkward because it
matched the color on the cheek-bones.

"An only daughter and an heiress, spoilt by her father and mother,
spoilt by her husband and the city of Strasbourg, spoilt still by two
daughters who worshiped their mother, the Baroness d'Aldrigger
indulged a taste for rose color, short petticoats, and a knot of
ribbon at the point of the tightly-fitting corselet bodice. Any
Parisian meeting the Baroness on the boulevard would smile and condemn
her outright; he does not admit any plea of extenuating circumstances,
like a modern jury on a case of fratricide. A scoffer is always
superficial, and in consequence cruel; the rascal never thinks of