[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

That very morning, under the auspices of Madame
de Chateauneuve, I made my first visit to the lovely
Marie de Berniere. She received us very graciously,
and was, I fancied, particularly solicitous of the favorable
regards of Madame de C. Nor had I any reason
to complain. Benevolence and sweetness were apparently
the most distinguishing traits in her composition;
and she very soon put me quite at ease beside
her. When I left her, I felt as if she were an old
acquaintance. I have said that Marie de Berniere
was a belle. She deserved to be so, and would have
had friends in spite of all her fortune. She was but
twenty-two at the time of which I write, and possessed
all the frankness, the delicacy, and freshness of a girl
of seventeen; with the additional advantages of a contemplative
mood derived from a premature experience.
Never did a more beautiful or princely creature glide
through the measured majesty of dance. Her form
was rather above the middling size, but eminently
symmetrical. Her carriage was at once dignified and
unaffected. So much grace and simplicity, with so
much elevation and nobility, were never before united
in the same person. Her features were by no means
regular. Regularity of features, indeed, is seldom
consistent with real or remarkable beauty—but hers

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

were so perfect in themselves, and each so perfect by
itself, that their combined expression was irresistible,
and readily served to divert the eye from any too
close analysis of details, which might have resulted in
an unfavorable decision upon the whole. In brief,
you were touched, and made to sympathize with the
object, before you could begin its study, and then all
farther examination was prosecuted under a bias which
left the judgment no longer free. You were not allowed
to perceive a deficiency in charms which had
already dazzled the glance and warmed the fancy;
and the mind yielded with the eye, and the heart submitted
at the first summons, to a nameless influence
which was sufficient to prejudice, in its behalf, the
severest purpose of the critic. Such was the effect of
the beauty of Marie de Berniere on most persons. In
this way, perhaps, had it won the young admiration
of my companion. He admitted that he had yielded
without resistance, at a mere glance, when he first
came to New Orleans; but he insisted that the first
impressions of his eye had been confirmed by the subsequent
experience of his mind. We shall see. At
all events, I was not prepared, or indeed, at all disposed,
to question the propriety of his feelings or the
wisdom of his tastes. My first interview with the
beautiful widow awakened in my own heart a warm
and genial attachment for her; not of love, remember,
but of such a kind as to make it easy to understand
how it should be love in the bosom of my friend.
Still, I am disposed to think that, prudent and cool
in all other matters, Frederick Brandon had hurried

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

into this attachment with all the impulse of the boy,
just freed from the leash at twenty-one. All men
have their rashnesses, and this was his. Admitting
all the charms of Marie de Berniere, there were some
peculiarities about her that never entirely satisfied
myself.

These, I was more sensible of, during a quiet evening
at Madame de Chateauneuve's mansion, preceding
by a few days the bal masque, and where I saw her
for the second time. On this occasion, I studied her
with much more freedom and particularity than before.
That she was a person of many and imposing
beauties, such as must infallibly make themselves
admired and soon beloved by thousands, almost at a
glance, I could easily perceive and will cheerfully
admit. It was the style and manner of her beauty
that did not satisfy me—that startled me, in fact,
and made me to fear, in some degree, as well as to
admire. I felt that there was something unnaturally
powerful in the very intensity of her glance. Nothing
could have been more brilliant than her eye. But it
was fascination, no less than splendor. The effect was
rather to dazzle and confound, than to persuade. If
it had the brilliancy of the diamond—its purity and
clearness—it seemed to possess its hardness also.
The lady had a habit of looking on you, fixedly, into
your very eye—a habit which very seldom pleases
or attracts; her own glittering all the while, with a
piercing shaft-like directness, of the intensity of
which she seemed to be nearly entirely unconscious.
It happened, not unfrequently, while she was thus

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

looking through you, as it were, that your remarks
would utterly fail to fix her thoughts or command her
attention. Her mind seemed, at such moments, to be
wandering; her faculties absorbed in musings and
contemplations as widely remote from what you were
saying, and even from yourself, as if she were wholly
in another world and presence; and when, by an evident
effort of will, she would recall her consciousness
to the things about her, it was with a seeming restlessness
of mood that robbed the features, for awhile,
of all expression. These were peculiarities which I
did not conceive to be pleasant ones. There was yet
another. There was a something in the occasional
quivering of her thin lips, which produced an uncomfortable
sensation; and she had a habit of drawing
in her breath, at moments of pause, in the conversation,
with a slight sobbing sound, such as an infant
gives out after having cried itself to sleep. This was
another peculiarity which, I confess, tended somewhat
to qualify my admiration of her charms. They
seemed to be so many proofs of an hysterical tendency,
and to betray, also, the weight of some secret
sorrow or anxiety, which we do not relish should
appear conspicuous in the case of youth and feminine
beauty. I doubt whether Frederick Brandon perceived
these peculiarities at all, or they may have
seemed to him only so many additional beauties.

Of her features a brief sketch will suffice. Her
hair was of a light brown; her eye was hazel; her
complexion dazzlingly fair, and distinguished by the
most delicate peach-blossom that ever kindled the

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

virgin cheek to loveliness. Never was mouth more
sweetly yet expressively fashioned. Her nose was
Grecian; the eye large and eminent; the chin full,
but delicately rounded; the forehead high rather than
massive; the neck long and white, arching beautifully,
and the throat broad and very fair, and worthy of
the well-fashioned bust from which it rose. Of her
figure and carriage I have spoken.

Such was the result of my observations during my
second interview with Madame de Berniere. They
must not be thought unfavorable. Perhaps I sought
for defects, in order to prevent myself from becoming
too much pleased. I must add that, personally, I had
no reason to be less satisfied with her on this than
on the previous occasion. Her attention to me was
quite as friendly as before. She evidently treated me
with special favor; and I was not vain enough to
ascribe this treatment to any cause but the high degree
of favor which my friend enjoyed in her estimation.
But, let us hurry; the masquerade approaches.