_O quam me delectat_ Sara Bernhardt! I love such diversified, such picturesque gifts. Sculpture, painting, acting, writing! This is why I loved Lydia, who was an adept at numberless arts and accomplishments. She was a brunette with a clear, cream-tinged skin, red cheeks, rolling black eyes, ripe velvety lips, and hair of a beautiful hue and rich lustre--raven black, yet purple as the pigeon's wing in the sun. I believe it is true that dark people belong to the pre-historic races: centuries of sunlight are fused in their glowing complexion. Blondes are beautiful--both the rosy ones with pinkish eyelids and warm golden locks, and the pale ones with ash-colored hair, gray eyes and dark brows and lashes--but a florid brunette excels them all.
In seeing Lydia you would make the mistake that you usually make in judging girls: entering among them, you think their attitudes proclaim their traits. For instance, you take the most giggling one for a simpleton, but afterward learn that she is a good scholar and has accepted the Greek chair in a Western college, and looking again you see she has a strong frame, a capable head and large bright eyes. Lydia dressed in the mode, wore the high-heeled shoes that give such a dainty look to the foot and gait, and came into a room with a great effusion of fashionableness; yet she was not in the least what she seemed. She had a great deal of what is more pleasing than mere appearance, and that is character. She was ambitious and energetic. She did tatting when she did nothing else--said it concealed her lack of repose and liability to fidget. She was able to draw _la quintessence de tout_: she could make a mountain-spring of a mole-hill. She also had a touch of temper: those who are perfectly amiable are nothing else.
I was a youth blue-eyed and fair of face, tall, thin and having a complying spirit that has been--But let me not anticipate. The race after fashion ever wearied me--I shall stop early at some standing-collar or heavy-neckcloth period--and I never cared much for money--could live with it or without it, desiring "this man's art or that man's scope" rather than his cash. There is such a great majority of poor folks, I expected to be one of them; still, I had a taste for honesty, asked favors of nobody, considered the least debt a degradation, and thought myself better than most rich people. I was of the family and the religion of Plato, who peddled oil to pay his expenses while travelling in Egypt.
