Margot’s existence here was a thing apart from everything plebeian: she was immensely wealthy; had riches such as are won by few, though sought by many, plantations in the country, houses in town, money on call in quantity that made great bankers bow; women to wait upon her, deferential men, boys to run at her beck, maidservants, bond and free, to go before her; her cellar was famous for its wines, her dress for its wild and extravagant beauty; all that she touched she took; all that she took she kept; everything that she kept increased beyond the bounds of reason; she was spoken to with deference and referred to with finesse. She had her carriage, lined with silk, with yellow hammer-cloths and bands; in the license of her beauty she laughed at sumptuary laws, and in her illegal equipage rolled insolently on; in amber gown and canary turban fastened with a golden brooch, despite the law, she rode the streets like a charioted queen; or, dressed in wild, unstudied colors such as are used in Barbary, she wandered in her garden in the after-hours of the day, making wreaths of the saffron roses, a cockatoo upon her arm the color of a wild peach flower. A shapely, splendid creature, with her handsome, heavy hands, neck like a tower, glorious hair hanging rich beneath its turban, her embroidered robe but carelessly worn and recklessly adjusted--oddly, the coarser the more becoming,--a goddess made of beautiful earth, but coarse as the cotton-flower, with confident face and insolent mien she took her way through the streets with a supple stride which was the despair of envious rivalry; hers was a regal beauty like the tiger’s loveliness. With her face like beauty seen in dreams, incredible and untrue, she went through the community like a lovely malady: even wise men’s souls were troubled; sturdy hearts that had laughed at passion shook with the fairness of her face; piety was troubled by her golden loveliness. More than one sermon from Solomon’s Song was inspired by Rita Lagoux; she was known as the woman with a face like a beautiful blasphemy. Time but increased the wildness and singularity of her beauty: it was gossiped about in the market-stalls; it was babbled about in the streets. Then a torpor fell on her loveliness, a dull and leaden look; her beauty grew sullen and lowering as the flame of a fallen fire. Though not much altered in appearance she was somehow greatly changed. Her looks had lost something, no one could say what, gained something none could define. It was not that she was less the unforgettable being she had been, or that her sullen beauty made less mark on memory, but that the ecstasy of beauty was replaced by a queer unrest. Though as never before she was possessed of a singular comeliness, men began to regard her with an odd uneasiness: there was a foreignness in her face, and the look of alien things. She looked like a portrait of herself painted in irony.