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- 1078
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1029
- text
- II.
While Pierre and Lucy are now rolling along under the elms, let it be
said who Lucy Tartan was. It is needless to say that she was a beauty;
because chestnut-haired, bright-cheeked youths like Pierre Glendinning,
seldom fall in love with any but a beauty. And in the times to come,
there must be--as in the present times, and in the times gone by--some
splendid men, and some transcendent women; and how can they ever be,
unless always, throughout all time, here and there, a handsome youth
weds with a handsome maid!
But though owing to the above-named provisions of dame Nature, there
always will be beautiful women in the world; yet the world will never
see another Lucy Tartan. Her cheeks were tinted with the most delicate
white and red, the white predominating. Her eyes some god brought down
from heaven; her hair was Danae's, spangled with Jove's shower; her
teeth were dived for in the Persian Sea.
If long wont to fix his glance on those who, trudging through the
humbler walks of life, and whom unequal toil and poverty deform; if that
man shall haply view some fair and gracious daughter of the gods, who,
from unknown climes of loveliness and affluence, comes floating into
sight, all symmetry and radiance; how shall he be transported, that in a
world so full of vice and misery as ours, there should yet shine forth
this visible semblance of the heavens. For a lovely woman is not
entirely of this earth. Her own sex regard her not as such. A crowd of
women eye a transcendent beauty entering a room, much as though a bird
from Arabia had lighted on the window sill. Say what you will, their
jealousy--if any--is but an afterbirth to their open admiration. Do men
envy the gods? And shall women envy the goddesses? A beautiful woman is
born Queen of men and women both, as Mary Stuart was born Queen of
Scots, whether men or women. All mankind are her Scots; her leal clans
are numbered by the nations. A true gentleman in Kentucky would
cheerfully die for a beautiful woman in Hindostan, though he never saw
her. Yea, count down his heart in death-drops for her; and go to Pluto,
that she might go to Paradise. He would turn Turk before he would disown
an allegiance hereditary to all gentlemen, from the hour their Grand
Master, Adam, first knelt to Eve.
A plain-faced Queen of Spain dwells not in half the glory a beautiful
milliner does. Her soldiers can break heads, but her Highness can not
crack a heart; and the beautiful milliner might string hearts for
necklaces. Undoubtedly, Beauty made the first Queen. If ever again the
succession to the German Empire should be contested, and one poor lame
lawyer should present the claims of the first excellingly beautiful
woman he chanced to see--she would thereupon be unanimously elected
Empress of the Holy Roman German Empire;--that is to say, if all the
Germans were true, free-hearted and magnanimous gentlemen, at all
capable of appreciating so immense an honor.
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