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A Daughter of Eve-Part8_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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made her debut two years later at an obscure boulevard theatre. At

fifteen, neither beauty nor talent exist; a woman is simply all



promise.

She was now twenty-eight,--the age at which the beauties of a French



woman are in their glory. Painters particularly admired the lustre of

her white shoulders, tinted with olive tones about the nape of the



neck, and wonderfully firm and polished, so that the light shimmered

over them as it does on watered silk. When she turned her head, superb



folds formed about her neck, the admiration of sculptors. She carried

on this triumphant neck the small head of a Roman empress, the



delicate, round, and self-willed head of Pompeia, with features of

elegant correctness, and the smooth forehead of a woman who drives all



care away and all reflection, who yields easily, but is capable of

balking like a mule, and incapable at such times of listening to



reason. That forehead, turned, as it were, with one cut of the chisel,

brought out the beauty of the golden hair, which was raised in front,



after the Roman fashion, in two equal masses, and twisted up behind

the head to prolong the line of the neck, and enhance that whiteness



by its beautiful color. Black and delicate eyebrows, drawn by a

Chinese brush, encircled the soft eyelids, which were threaded with



rosy fibres. The pupils of the eyes, extremely bright, though striped

with brown rays, gave to her glance the cruel fixity of a beast of



prey, and betrayed the cold maliciousness of the courtesan. The eyes

were gray, fringed with black lashes,--a charmingcontrast, which made



their expression of calm and contemplative voluptuousness the more

observable; the circle round the eyes showed marks of fatigue, but the



artistic manner in which she could turn her eyeballs, right and left,

or up and down, to observe, or seem to mediate, the way in which she



could hold them fixed, casting out their vivid fire without moving her

head, without taking from her face its absolute immovability (a



manoeuvre learned upon the stage), and the vivacity of their glance,

as she looked about a theatre in search of a friend, made her eyes the



most terrible, also the softest, in short, the most extraordinary eyes

in the world. Rouge had destroyed by this time the diaphanous tints of



her cheeks, the flesh of which was still delicate; but although she

could no longer blush or turn pale, she had a thin nose with rosy,



passionate nostrils, made to express irony,--the mocking irony of

Moliere's women-servants. Her sensual mouth, expressive of sarcasm and



love of dissipation, was adorned with a deep furrow that united the

upper lip with the nose. Her chin, white and rather fat, betrayed the



violence of passion. Her hands and arms were worthy of a sovereign.

But she had one ineradicable sign of low birth,--her foot was short



and fat. No inherited quality ever caused greater distress. Florine

had tried everything, short of amputation, to get rid of it. The feet



were obstinate, like the Breton race from which she came; they

resisted all treatment. Florine now wore long boots stuffed with



cotton, to give length, and the semblance of an instep. Her figure was

of mediumheight, threatened with corpulence, but still well-balanced,



and well-made.

Morally, she was an adept in all the attitudinizing, quarrelling,



alluring, and cajoling of her business; and she gave to those actions

a savor of their own by playing childlike innocence, and slipping in



among her artless speeches philosophical malignities. Apparently

ignorant and giddy, she was very strong on money-matters and



commercial law,--for the reason that she had gone through so much

misery before attaining to her present precarious success. She had



come down, story by story, from the garret to the first floor, through

so many vicissitudes! She knew life, from that which begins in Brie



cheese and ends at pineapples; from that which cooks and washes in the




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