My d'Herouville will receive you as
civilly as if you were the saviour of the State; and to-morrow you can
decide. Come, be jolly, old boy! Life is a garment; when it is dirty,
we must brush it; when it is ragged, it must be patched; but we keep
it on as long as we can."
This philosophy of life, and her high spirits, postponed Hulot's
keenest pangs.
At noon next day, after a capital breakfast, Hulot saw the arrival of
one of those living masterpieces which Paris alone of all the cities
in the world can produce, by means of the constant concubinage of
luxury and poverty, of vice and decent honesty, of suppressed desire
and renewed temptation, which makes the French capital the daughter of
Ninevah, of Babylon, and of Imperial Rome.
Mademoiselle Olympe Bijou, a child of sixteen, had the exquisite face
which Raphael drew for his Virgins; eyes of pathetic innocence, weary
with overwork--black eyes, with long lashes, their moisture parched
with the heat of laborious nights, and darkened with fatigue; a
complexion like porcelain, almost too delicate; a mouth like a partly
opened pomegranate; a heaving bosom, a full figure, pretty hands, the
whitest teeth, and a mass of black hair; and the whole meagrely set
off by a cotton frock at seventy-five centimes the metre, leather
shoes without heels, and the cheapest gloves.
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