THE HEAD.
BY L. E. L.
THE Countess Amalie de Boufflers was one of the very prettiest specimens of a pretty woman that Paris and nature had ever constructed. She had bright golden hair, always exquisitely dressed, whether sprinkled with powder, lighted with diamonds, and waving with feathers, or suffered to hand in the studied negligence of a crop à l’Anglaise. She had a hand as white as a lily, and nearly as small; a foot and ankle as faultless as the satin slippers—which their artist said required the imagination of a poet to conceive, and the genius of a sculptor to execute: her walk was the most exquisite mixture of agility and helplessness that ever paid a cavalier the compliment of attracting his attention and requiring his aid; her dancing made the Prince de Ligne exclaim, "I understand the fables of mythology—Madame realizes the classic idea of the Graces." Never did any body dress so exquisitely; Raphael himself never managed drapery to such a flow of elegance, Corregio never understood half so well the arrangement of colours, and in the management of fan, flacon, scarf, handkerchief, and bouquet she was unrivalled—"the power of science could no further go." Beautiful she was not, for the imagination and the heart must enter into the
composition of beauty—that beauty which is both poetry and passion; but, after all, there is no word in French that translates our "beautiful," and who in her own sphere could have desired her to be what their language did not even express? Numberless were the lovers whom she drove to despair—and many were those whom she did not! But all her petites affaires de coeur were arranged in the most perfect taste; no scenes, no jealousies, no brouilleries; these are things which a femme d’esprit always avoids, and, as the Countess was wont to observe, "Je suis femme d’esprit par la grâce de Dieu—et je le sais."
It was amazing, in spite of all her avocations, how much she contrived to do for her husband: half at least of his pensions, places, and favours were owing to her solicitations; and this was very disinterested—for as they scarcely ever met, she had no motive for keeping him in good humour. Talk of the industry of the lower classes:—no woman with two cows, six children, to say nothing of pigs and poultry, and who takes in washing to boot, ever worked harder than the Countess de Boufflers; the poets whom she patronised; the plays which she protected, for a smile
