"It is not very easy for a foreigner, my dear Count, to recognize the
differences by which the observer _emeritus_ distinguishes them--women
are such consummate actresses; but they are glaring in the eyes of
Parisians: hooks ill fastened, strings showing loops of rusty-white
tape through a gaping slit in the back, rubbed shoe-leather, ironed
bonnet-strings, an over-full skirt, an over-tight waist. You will see
a certain effort in the intentional droop of the eyelid. There is
something conventional in the attitude.

"As to the _bourgeoise_, the citizen womankind, she cannot possibly be
mistaken for the spell cast over you by the Unknown. She is bustling,
and goes out in all weathers, trots about, comes, goes, gazes, does
not know whether she will or will not go into a shop. Where the lady
knows just what she wants and what she is doing, the townswoman is
undecided, tucks up her skirts to cross a gutter, dragging a child by
the hand, which compels her to look out for the vehicles; she is a
mother in public, and talks to her daughter; she carries money in her
bag, and has open-work stockings on her feet; in winter, she wears a
boa over her fur cloak; in summer, a shawl and a scarf; she is
accomplished in the redundancies of dress.

"You will meet the fair Unknown again at the Italiens, at the Opera,
at a ball. She will then appear under such a different aspect that you
would think them two beings devoid of any analogy. The woman has
emerged from those mysterious garments like a butterfly from its silky
cocoon. She serves up, like some rare dainty, to your lavished eyes,
the forms which her bodice scarcely revealed in the morning. At the
theatre she never mounts higher than the second tier, excepting at the
Italiens. You can there watch at your leisure the studied
deliberateness of her movements. The enchanting deceiver plays off all