, who had not numbered more than sixteen or seventeen years, boasted contours as robust and solid as those of a stout Englishwoman of five-and-twenty)⁠—fair forms robed in white, or pale rose, or placid blue, suggested thoughts of heaven and angels. I knew a couple, at least, of these rose et blanche specimens of humanity. Here was a pair of Madame Beck’s late pupils⁠—Mesdemoiselles Mathilde and Angélique: pupils who, during their last year at school, ought to have been in the first class, but whose brains never got them beyond the second division. In English, they had been under my own charge, and hard work it was to get them to translate rationally a page of The Vicar of Wakefield . Also during three months I had one of them for my vis-à-vis at table, and the quantity of household bread, butter, and stewed fruit, she would habitually consume at “second déjeuner ” was a real world’s wonder⁠—to be exceeded only by the fact of her actually pocketing slices she could not eat. Here be truths⁠—wholesome truths, too.

I knew another of these seraphs⁠—the prettiest, or, at any rate, the least demure and hypocritical looking of the lot: she was seated by the daughter of an English peer, also an honest, though haughty-looking girl; both had entered in the suite of the British embassy. She ( i.e. my acquaintance) had a slight, pliant figure, not at all like the forms of the foreign damsels; her hair, too, was not close-braided, like a shell or a skullcap of satin; it looked like hair, and waved from her head, long, curled, and flowing. She chatted away volubly, and seemed full of a lightheaded sort of satisfaction with herself and her position. I did not look at Dr.