On the cheeks the _alloying_ was done in _red_, the neighboring parts below were alloyed with _white_.[86]
Those teeth which place man in the class of ruminant animals, the incisors, were as white as ivory, and all the more so, because they were really such and came from the mouth of a graminivorous beast;--whether I mean by that an elephant or a common man, who seldom applies the teeth which, as scions, he grafts upon a nobler stem, to anything but vegetables; at all events so much is certain, that no other concluding clause will fit this period but the following: she had once more as many teeth as other Christian women, and two gold threads beside, because the dentist always had one part in the house and under the brush, while the others pronounced the dental letters.
As, according to the latest text-books trigonometry--and bosoms--can be divided only into _plane_ and _spherical_, and as she had manifestly the entire alternative before her, her geometrical genius preferred for her those magnitudes which afford geometers the greatest power and the greatest pleasure--the spherical.
Her attire, from shoe-rosettes to hat-rosettes, sought its effect far less in form than in material, and consequently could be less appraised by the eyes than on jeweler's scales, less by lines of beauty than according to carats--there always remained a distinction therefore between her and her legislative doll; for the rest she, like every other woman, had to carry herself according to that standard. I will say just one timely word here on dolls.
These bits of wood hold in their hands, as is well known, the law-giving power over the fairer portion of the female world; for they are the Legates and Vice-Queens, sent from Paris by the reigning line in the finery department, to rule over the female German Circles--and these wooden plenipotentiaries again send down their _heads_ (of caps) as _missi regii_, to reign over the more common ladies of rank. If these reigning wooden heads [or blockheads] cannot come themselves, they then (as living Princes in the privy council supply their places by their _portraits_) send their _laws_ and _likenesses_ in Schmauss _corpus_ of all imperial-decrees of fashion, which _corpus_ we all have in our hands under the name of the _Journal des Modes_. In such circumstances--as one piece of wood plays into the hands of another--but more unselfishly than whole colleges; since, furthermore, new ones are elected annually as Proconsuls--I do not wonder that the system of government at the toilettes is well arranged and administered and that the whole female commonwealth which men cannot govern, is, by the electric female Regents sent in bass-viol cases, who stand and direct in this aristocracy from Lisbon to St. Petersburg, kept in excellent order and subjection.