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FLORENTINE NIGHTS.
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their faces beautiful? Even this is hard to determine. For all their features are in constant motion; every Parisienne has a thousand faces, every one more laughing, more spirituelle, more charming than the other, and he would be well bewildered who under it all could detect the fairest, or the real face at all. Or are their eyes large? What do I know? We do not long examine the calibre of a cannon when its ball decapitates us. And even if they miss—these eyes—at least they dazzle us by their fire, and he is glad enough who can get out of shot-range. Is the space between the nose and mouth broad or narrow? Very often broad, when they turn up the nose; very often small, when they scornfully curl their upper lips. Is her mouth great or small? Who can tell where the lips leave off and laughing begins? To form a correct judgment, the one judging and the object judged must be in a condition of repose. But who can rest by a Parisienne, and what Parisienne ever rests, herself? There are people who believe they can see a butterfly quite accurately when they have fastened it with a pin on paper, which is as foolish as it is cruel, for a fixed and quiet insect is a butterfly no longer. It must be seen while it flutters among the flowers, and the Parieienne must not be studied in her domestic life, where she is pinned down, but in the salon,