And there sat Madame de Ventadour, a little apart from the dancers, with the silent English dandy Lord Taunton, exquisitely dressed and superbly tall, bolt upright behind her chair; and the sentimental German Baron von Schomberg, covered with orders, whiskered and wigged to the last hair of perfection, sighing at her left hand; and the French minister, shrewd, bland, and eloquent, in the chair at her right; and round on all sides pressed, and bowed, and complimented, a crowd of diplomatic secretaries and Italian princes, whose bank is at the gaming-table, whose estates are in their galleries, and who sell a picture, as English gentlemen cut down a wood, whenever the cards grow gloomy.

The charming De Ventadour! she had attraction for them all! smiles for the silent, badinage for the gay, politics for the Frenchman, poetry for the German, the eloquence of loveliness for all! She was looking her best--the slightest possible tinge of rouge gave a glow to her transparent complexion, and lighted up those large dark sparkling eyes (with a latent softness beneath the sparkle) seldom seen but in the French--and widely distinct from the unintellectual languish of the Spaniard, or the full and majestic fierceness of the Italian gaze.

Her dress of black velvet, and graceful hat with its princely plume, contrasted the alabaster whiteness of her arms and neck.

And what with the eyes, the skin, the rich colouring of the complexion, the rosy lips and the small ivory teeth, no one would have had the cold hypercriticism to observe that the chin was too pointed, the mouth too wide, and the nose, so beautiful in the front face, was far from perfect in the profile.
"Pray was Madame in the Strada Nuova to-day ?" asked the German, with as much sweetness in his voice as if he had been vowing eternal love.
"What else have we to do with our mornings, we women ?" replied Madame de Ventadour.

"Our life is a lounge from the cradle to the grave; and our afternoons are but the type of our career.