And laids , 106 indeed, they were; being a set of four, denominated in the catalogue La vie d’une femme . 107 They were painted rather in a remarkable style⁠—flat, dead, pale, and formal. The first represented a Jeune Fille , 108 coming out of a church-door, a missal in her hand, her dress very prim, her eyes cast down, her mouth pursed up⁠—the image of a most villainous little precocious she-hypocrite. The second, a Mariée , 109

with a long white veil, kneeling at a prie-dieu in her chamber, holding her hands plastered together, finger to finger, and showing the whites of her eyes in a most exasperating manner. The third, a Jeune Mère , 110 hanging disconsolate over a clayey and puffy baby with a face like an unwholesome full moon. The fourth, a Veuve , 111 being a black woman, holding by the hand a black little girl, and the twain studiously surveying an elegant French monument, set up in a corner of some Père la Chaise . All these four Anges 112 were grim and grey as burglars, and cold and vapid as ghosts. What women to live with! insincere, ill-humoured, bloodless, brainless nonentities! As bad in their way as the indolent gipsy-giantess, the Cleopatra, in hers.