Derville, one of the best heads in the law courts, the Comte du
Chatelet, deputy, du Tillet, banker, and several elegant young men,
such as Paul de Manerville and the Vicomte de Portenduere. Celestine
was pouring out tea when the general-secretary entered. Her dress that
evening was very becoming; she wore a black velvet robe without
ornament of any kind, a black gauze scarf, her hair smoothly bound
about her head and raised in a heavy braided mass, with long curls a
l'Anglaise falling on either side of her face. The charms which
particularly distinguished this woman were the Italian ease of her
artistic nature, her ready comprehension, and the grace with which she
welcomed and promoted the least appearance of a wish on the part of
others. Nature had given her an elegant, slender figure, which could
sway lightly at a word, black eyes of oriental shape, able, like those
of the Chinese women, to see out of their corners. She well knew how
to manage a soft, insinuating voice, which threw a tender charm into
every word, even such as she merely chanced to utter; her feet were
like those we see in portraits where the painter boldly lies and
flatters his sitter in the only way which does not compromise anatomy.
Her complexion, a little yellow by day, like that of most brunettes,
was dazzling at night under the wax candles, which brought out the
brilliancy of her black hair and eyes. Her slender and well-defined
outlines reminded an artist of the Venus of the Middle Ages rendered
by Jean Goujon, the illustrious sculptor of Diane de Poitiers.

Des Lupeaulx stopped in the doorway, and leaned against the woodwork.
This ferret of ideas did not deny himself the pleasure of spying upon
sentiment, and this woman interested him more than any of the others
to whom he had attached himself. Des Lupeaulx had reached an age when
men assert pretensions in regard to women. The first white hairs lead
to the latest passions, all the more violent because they are astride