The contrasts of their attitudes and the slight movements of their
heads, each differing in character and nature of attraction, set the
heart afire. It was like a thicket, where blossoms mingled with
rubies, sapphires, and coral; a combination of gossamer scarves that
flickered like beacon-lights; of black ribbons about snowy throats; of
gorgeous turbans and demurely enticing apparel. It was a seraglio that
appealed to every eye, and fulfilled every fancy. Each form posed to
admiration was scarcely concealed by the folds of cashmere, and half
hidden, half revealed by transparent gauze and diaphanous silk. The
little slender feet were eloquent, though the fresh red lips uttered
no sound.
Demure and fragile-looking girls, pictures of maidenly innocence, with
a semblance of conventional unction about their heads, were there like
apparitions that a breath might dissipate. Aristocratic beauties with
haughty glances, languid, flexible, slender, and complaisant, bent
their heads as though there were royal protectors still in the market.
An English-woman seemed like a spirit of melancholy--some coy, pale,
shadowy form among Ossian's mists, or a type of remorse flying from
crime. The Parisienne was not wanting in all her beauty that consists
in an indescribable charm; armed with her irresistible weakness, vain
of her costume and her wit, pliant and hard, a heartless, passionless
siren that yet can create factitious treasures of passion and
counterfeit emotion.
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