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68 cannot long maintain a gloomy silence. And the desire to please is there carried so far, that people strive earnestly to be agreeable not only to their friends but even their enemies. Hence a constant disguise and display of graces, so that women have their own time of it to surpass men in their coquetry—but succeed in it all the same.

"I mean indeed nothing wrong by this comparison—and, on my life! nothing in detraction of French women, and least of all the Parisiennes. For I am their greatest adorer, and honour and admire them more for their defects than for their virtues. I know nothing so exquisitely to the point as a legend that the French women came into the world with all possible faults, but that a beneficent fairy took pity, and gave to every fault a magic by which it appeared as a fresh charm. This enchanting fairy is grace. Are all French women beautiful? Who can tell? Who hath seen through all the intrigues of the toilet, into whose heart hath it entered to decipher if that is real which the tulle betrays, or is that false which puffed-out silk parades? And if it be given to the eye to penetrate the shell even as we are intent to examine the kernel, lo it covers itself in a new hull, and yet again in another, and by means of this incessant metamorphosis of modes they mock mankind. Are