"One thing which struck me this evening, as always, was the manifest
idolatry with which the women regard my husband. This, my tender
mother, terrifies me. Why--I ask myself--why did he choose me?
How can I please him? How can I succeed?

"Behold the result of all my meditations! A folly perhaps, but of
which the effect is to reassure me:

"Portrait of the Comtesse de Camors, drawn by herself.

"The Comtesse de Camors, formerly Marie de Tecle, is a personage
who, having reached her twentieth year, looks older. She is not
beautiful, as her husband is the first person to confess. He says
she is pretty; but she doubts even this. Let us see. She has very
long limbs, a fault which she shares with Diana, the Huntress, and
which probably gives to the gait of the Countess a lightness it
might not otherwise possess. Her body is naturally short, and on
horseback appears to best advantage. She is plump without being
gross.

"Her features are irregular; the mouth being too large and the lips
too thick, with--alas! the shade of a moustache; white teeth, a
little too small; a commonplace nose, a slightly pug; and her
mother's eyes--her best feature. She has the eyebrows of her Uncle
Des Rameures, which gives an air of severity to the face and
neutralizes the good-natured expression-a reflex from the softness
of her heart.

"She has the dark complexion of her mother, which is more becoming