much taller than she really was. A certain majesty in the turn of the
head, the fall of the shoulders, the breadth of the brow, and the
exceeding calmness of the features, invested her with an air which I have
never seen equalled by any one, but which, had Pasta been a beauty, she
might have possessed. But there was nothing hard or harsh in this
majesty. Whatsoever of a masculine nature Constance might have inherited,
nothing masculine, nothing not exquisitely feminine, was visible in her
person. Her shape was rounded, and sufficiently full to show, that in
middle age its beauty would be preserved by that richness and freshness
which a moderate increase of the proportions always gives to the sex. Her
arms and hands were, and are, even to this day, of a beauty the more
striking, because it is so rare. Nothing in any European country is more
uncommon than an arm really beautiful both in hue and shape. In any
assembly we go to, what miserable bones, what angular elbows, what red
skins, do we see under the cover of those capacious sleeves, which are
only one whit less ugly. At the time I speak of, those coverings were not
worn; and the white, round, dazzling arm of Constance, bare almost to the
shoulder, was girded by dazzling gems, which at once set off, and were
foiled by, the beauty of nature. Her hair was of the most luxuriant, and
of the deepest, black; and it was worn in a fashion--then uncommon,
without being bizarre--now hackneyed by the plainest faces, though suiting
only the highest order of beauty--I mean that simple and classic fashion
to which the French have given a name borrowed from Calypso, but which
appears to me suited rather to an intellectual than a voluptuous goddess.
Her long lashes, and a brow delicately but darkly pencilled, gave
additional eloquence to an eye of the deepest blue, and a classic contour
to a profile so slightly aquiline, that it was commonly considered
Grecian. That necessary completion to all real beauty of either sex, the
short and curved upper lip, terminated in the most dazzling teeth and the
ripe and dewy under lip added to what was noble in her beauty that charm