This tiny braid, concealed in
the mass of hair always carefully put up, allowed the eye to follow
with delight the undulating line by which her neck was set upon her
shoulders. This little detail will show the care which she gave to her
person; it was her pride to rejoice the eyes of the old baron. What a
charming, delicate attention! When you see a woman displaying in her
own home the coquetry which most women spend on a single sentiment,
believe me, that woman is as noble a mother as she is a wife; she is
the joy and the flower of the home; she knows her obligations as a
woman; in her soul, in her tenderness, you will find her outward
graces; she is doing good in secret; she worships, she adores without
a calculation of return; she loves her fellows, as she loves God,--for
their own sakes. And so one might fancy that the Virgin of paradise,
under whose care she lived, had rewarded the chaste girlhood and the
sacred life of the old man's wife by surrounding her with a sort of
halo which preserved her beauty from the wrongs of time. The
alterations of that beauty Plato would have glorified as the coming of
new graces.
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