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The Village Rector by Honoré de Balzac
page 55 of 328 (16%)
ugly, dull, and vacant, Madame Graslin, at the beginning of the year
1828, was regarded as one of the leading personages in the town, and
the most noted woman in society. No one went to see her in the
mornings, for all knew her habits of benevolence and the regularity of
her religious observances. She always went to early mass so as not to
delay her husband's breakfast, for which, however, there was no fixed
hour, though she never failed to be present and to serve it herself.
Graslin had trained his wife to this little ceremony. He continued to
praise her on all occasions; he thought her perfect; she never asked
him for anything; he could pile up louis upon louis, and spread his
investments over a wide field of enterprise through his relations with
the Brezacs; he sailed with a fair wind and well freighted over the
ocean of commerce,--his intense business interest keeping him in the
still, though half-intoxicated, frenzy of gamblers watching events on
the green table of speculation.

During this happy period, and until the beginning of the year 1829,
Madame Graslin attained, in the eyes of her friends, to a degree of
beauty that was really extraordinary, the reasons of which they were
unable to explain. The blue of the iris expanded like a flower,
diminishing the dark circle of the pupil, and seeming to float in a
liquid and languishing light that was full of love. Her forehead,
illumined by thoughts and memories of happiness, was seen to whiten
like the zenith before the dawn, and its lines were purified by an
inward fire. Her face lost those heated brown tones which betoken a
disturbance of the liver,--that malady of vigorous constitutions, or
of persons whose soul is distressed and whose affections are thwarted.
Her temples became adorably fresh and pure; gleams of the celestial
face of a Raffaelle showed themselves now and then in hers,--a face
hitherto obscured by the malady of grief, as the canvas of the great
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