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32 around her face like little flickering flames, nor those gentle lips, nor those pink cheeks which gave her face the freshness of a flower, she would still have been bewitchingly beautiful, thanks to her blue eyes, which were always a little dewy, as though tears were playing in them, and always smiling, even at the times of her deepest sadness. And her look, her figure, all her delicate and attractive personality breathed such touching purity that the most indifferent were lapped in it as in the soft caresses of a balmy breeze.

Her charm was made up of goodness, simplicity and, above all, innocence, that innocence which is unaware of its own existence, which knows nothing of life, which suspects no evil and which does not see the traps laid for it, nor the hypocrisy that surrounds it, nor the envy which it inspires.

La Bonne Demoiselle was the name by which the poor called her, thus correcting, by a sort of common instinct, the style which circumstances had compelled her to adopt.