Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/173

 CHAPTER XIX

MATRE PULCHRÂ, FILIA PULCHRIOR

Since Horace wrote that musical ode in which he expresses a poet's admiration pretty equally divided between mother and daughter, how many similes have been exhausted, how many images distorted to convey the touching and suggestive resemblance by which nature reproduces in the bud a beauty that has bloomed to maturity in the flower! Amongst all the peculiarities of race, family likeness is the commonest, the most prized, and the least understood. Perhaps, because the individuality of women is more easily affected by extraneous influences, it seems usually less impressed upon the sons than the daughters of a House. Then a girl often marries so young, that she has scarcely done with her girl's graces, certainly lost none of her woman's charms, ere she finds a copy at her side as tall as herself; a very counterpart in figure, voice, eyes, hair, complexion; all the externals in which she takes most pride; whose similarity and companionship are a source of continual happiness, alloyed only by the dread of a contingency that shall make herself a grandmother!

As they sat in the boudoir of the Hotel Montmirail, enjoying the cool evening breeze at an open window, the Marquise and her daughter might have been likened to a goddess and a nymph, a rose and a rosebud—what shall I say?—a cat and her kitten, or a cow and her calf! But although in voice, manner, gestures, and general effect, this similarity was so remarkable, a closer inspection might have found many points of difference; and the girl seemed, indeed, an ideal sketch rather than a finished portrait of