unattainable artist, whose hand can paint the reflection of inward
fires and render that luminous vapor which defies science and is not
revealable by language--but which a lover sees. Her soft, fair hair
often caused her much suffering, no doubt through sudden rushes of
blood to the head. Her brow, round and prominent like that of Joconda,
teemed with unuttered thoughts, restrained feelings--flowers drowning
in bitter waters. The eyes, of a green tinge flecked with brown, were
always wan; but if her children were in question, or if some keen
condition of joy or suffering (rare in the lives of all resigned
women) seized her, those eyes sent forth a subtile gleam as if from
fires that were consuming her,--the gleam that wrung the tears from
mine when she covered me with her contempt, and which sufficed to
lower the boldest eyelid. A Grecian nose, designed it might be by
Phidias, and united by its double arch to lips that were gracefully
curved, spiritualized the face, which was oval with a skin of the
texture of a white camellia colored with soft rose-tints upon the
cheeks. Her plumpness did not detract from the grace of her figure nor
from the rounded outlines which made her shape beautiful though well
developed. You will understand the character of this perfection when I
say that where the dazzling treasures which had so fascinated me
joined the arm there was no crease or wrinkle. No hollow disfigured
the base of her head, like those which make the necks of some women
resemble trunks of trees; her muscles were not harshly defined, and
everywhere the lines were rounded into curves as fugitive to the eye
as to the pencil. A soft down faintly showed upon her cheeks and on
the outline of her throat, catching the light which made it silken.
Her little ears, perfect in shape, were, as she said herself, the ears
of a mother and a slave. In after days, when our hearts were one, she
would say to me, "Here comes Monsieur de Mortsauf"; and she was right,
though I, whose hearing is remarkably acute, could hear nothing.