She was indisputably beautiful, and Claudius, who had thought that the Jewess was incomparable, feared that the apple would have to be halved, since neither could have borne it entire away.

But the Jewess's loveliness exalted the beholder; this one's was of the strange, irritating sort, resisted with difficulty and alluring a man into those byways which end in the gaming hell, the saturnalian halls, and the suicide's grave.

Love had never chosen a more appetizing form to be the pivot on which human folly--perhaps human genius--was to spin idly and uselessly, like a beetle on a pin in a naturalist's cabinet.
Kaiserina von Vieradlers was the modern Venus, a creation of the modiste rather than of the sculptor; though hips and bosom were developed extravagantly, the long waist was absurdly small; but no token of ill health from the tight lacing appeared in the irreproachable shape, the well-turned arms and the countenance which was unmarred in a single lineament; the movements were not strictly ladylike, they were too unfettered in spite of the smooth gloves and the stylish unwrinkled ball dress, rather short in front to parade the slippers mentioned and silk stockings so nicely moulded to the trim ankle as to show the dimple.

She was more fair in her eighteenth year--if she were so old--than a Danish baby in the cradle.

The yellow hair had a clear golden tint not tawny, and the fineness was remarkable of the stray threads that serpentined out of the artistic braid and drooping ringlets.