But English beauty in Passy was soon to receive a memorable addition to
its ranks in the person of a certain Madame Seraskier, who came with an
invalid little daughter to live in the house so modestly described in
gold as "Parva sed Apta."

She was the English, or rather the Irish, wife of a Hungarian patriot
and man of science, Dr. Seraskier (son of the famous violinist); an
extremely tall, thin man, almost gigantic, with a grave, benevolent
face, and a head like a prophet's; who was, like my father, very much
away from his family--conspiring perhaps--or perhaps only inventing
(like my father), and looking out "for his ship to come home!"

[Illustration: "SHE TOPPED MY TALL MOTHER."]

This fair lady's advent was a sensation--to me a sensation that never
palled or wore itself away; it was no longer now "la belle Madame
Pasquier," but "la divine Madame Seraskier"--beauty-blind as the French
are apt to be.

She topped my tall mother by more than half a head; as was remarked by
Madame Pele, whose similes were all of the kitchen and dining-room,
"elle lui mangerait des petits pates sur la tete!" And height, that
lends dignity to ugliness, magnifies beauty on a scale of geometrical
progression--2, 4, 8, 16, 32--for every consecutive inch, between five
feet five, let us say, and five feet ten or eleven (or thereabouts),
which I take to have been Madame Seraskier's measurement.

She had black hair and blue eyes--of the kind that turns violet in a
novel--and a beautiful white skin, lovely hands and feet, a perfect
figure, and features chiselled and finished and polished and turned out