No ingenue
among the naiads, a truant from her river spring, could have been
shyer, whiter, more ingenuous than this young girl, seemingly about
sixteen years old, ignorant of evil and of the storms of life, and
fresh from some church in which she must have prayed the angels to
call her to heaven before the time. Only in Paris are such natures as
this to be found, concealing depths of depravity behind a fair mask,
and the most artificial vices beneath a brow as young and fair as an
opening flower.
At first the angelic promise of those soft lineaments misled the
friends. Raphael and Emile took the coffee which she poured into the
cups brought by Aquilina, and began to talk with her. In the eyes of
the two poets she soon became transformed into some sombre allegory,
of I know not what aspect of human life. She opposed to the vigorous
and ardent expression of her commanding acquaintance a revelation of
heartless corruption and voluptuous cruelty. Heedless enough to
perpetrate a crime, hardy enough to feel no misgivings; a pitiless
demon that wrings larger and kinder natures with torments that it is
incapable of knowing, that simpers over a traffic in love, sheds tears
over a victim's funeral, and beams with joy over the reading of the
will.
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