ABSTRACT
From the moment I saw her, I was struck as I had never been with any other woman. She had been resplendently beautiful. Her features were not less perfect than those of the mother of Catherine. The colour had indeed deserted 90her cheeks; but her complexion was of the most consummate fairness. Her lips imparted the idea of delicacy itself. Her eyes had a mild and languishing effect, which perhaps can never be found in those of a person in perfect health. Her high forehead was as white as alabaster, and was doubly relieved by a profusion of ringlets of dark brown hair. But the main charm of the whole consisted in the mild expression / of a divine resignation. She was like nothing earthly. Human passions seemed extinguished in her; she was among the admired of her sex, but she ‘was not of them’ a you approached her with awe, as if she were descended from the spheres; a figure like hers, if encountered in the days of the fabulous mythology, would undoubtedly have been worshipped as a goddess.
