She united, he says, the
sweetness of the German lady with the energy of the Arabian, a
combination hard to judge of. As to her feet, he adds, I say nothing;
for she had scarcely any at all. '_Je ne parle point de ses pieds,
elle n'en avait presque pas_.' 'Poor lady!' says a compassionate
rustic: 'no feet! What a shocking thing that so fine a woman should
have been so sadly mutilated!' Oh, my dear rustic, you're quite in the
wrong box. The Frenchman means this as the very highest compliment.
Beautiful, however, she must have been; and a Cinderella, I hope, not a
Cinderellula, considering that she had the inimitable walk and step of
the Andalusians, which cannot be accomplished without something of a
proportionate basis to stand upon.
The reason which there is (as I have said) for describing this lady,
arises out of her relation to the tragic events which followed. She, by
her criminal levity, was the cause of all. And I must here warn the
moralizing blunderer of two errors that he is too likely to make: 1st,
That he is invited to read some extract from a licentious amour, as if
for its own interest; 2d, Or on account of Donna Catalina's memoirs,
with a view to relieve their too martial character. I have the pleasure
to assure him of his being so utterly in the darkness of error, that
any possible change he can make in his opinions, right or left, must be
for the better: he cannot stir, but he will mend, which is a delightful
thought for the moral and blundering mind.
Pages:
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236