So was Helen Jegado a pure blonde. She lived in the time of Louis Philippe; and a great many persons fell victims to her genius for murder. No less than twenty-five are positively known to have been taken off by her. She managed wonderfully to use two innocent women to cover these crimes and to be suspected instead of herself. At the place of execution she exonerated them.
Charlotte Corday's hair "seemed black when fastened in a large mass around her head: it seemed gold-colored at the points of the tresses, like the ear of corn,--deeper and more lustrous than the wheat-stalk in the sunlight." Her variable eyes were "blue when she reflected, almost black when called into animated play." Her skin had the wholesome and marbled whiteness of perfect health.
Rebecca Sharp had "a knack of adopting a demure _ingénue_ air, under which she was most dangerous. She said the wickedest things with the most simple, unaffected air when in this mood, and would take care artlessly to apologize for her blunders, so that all the world should know that she had made them."
Ninon de l'Enclos, and Madame de Chevreuse, the famous conspirator who baffled two cardinals with an admirable mixture of pluck and cunning, were pure blondes. Such women court their objects and pursue their schemes in a manifold and sprightly fashion: their magnetic power flits to and fro, many-colored, subtle, silent, swift as an aurora. They have complicated the policy of courts and sown dissension in cabinets. They misrepresent a statesman's secrets, set one clique against another, stir about in society till it becomes one stupendous snarl; and perhaps you cannot point to a spot upon their reputation. They give slander itself no opportunity to lie as they can do, while they immaculately defy truth to brand as counterfeit the phrases of their charming insincerity. Look at the smooth brow that sheds your scrutiny: there's not a crease nor wrinkle on it where suspicion may lodge to fester. The eyes embrace you with the frankness of Joab, who took Abner aside to speak with him, quietly, asking, "Art thou in health, my brother?" and smote him there under the fifth rib, and left him far from well.
Among blonde women we can easily observe two kinds, which may be called, for brevity, the lunar and the solar. The one kind seems as if blanched by sunlight that has been reflected: it wilts from defect rather than excess of warming power. The passions are low-toned, like the body: a sort of scrofulous habit seems indicated by a too delicate and thin complexion; it lurks in the lifeless yellow or chestnut of the hair, in the unsound teeth and the languid speech. There is little valor for mischief in them, as there is little ambition for achievement. Their virtue seems only a temper that is kept faint as if by constant exudation of the blood.