Omphale's white shoulders were half covered by the skin of the Nemean lion. Her slender hand leaned upon her lover's knotty club. Her lovely blonde hair, powdered to ash-color, fell loosely over her neck--a neck as supple and undulating in its outlines as the neck of a dove. Her little feet, true realizations of the typical Andalusian or Chinese foot, and which would have been lost in Cinderella's glass slippers, were shod with half-antique buskins of a tender lilac color, sprinkled with pearls. In truth, she was a charming creature. Her head was thrown back with an adorable little mock swagger, her dimpled mouth wore a delicious little pout, her nostrils were slightly expanded, her cheeks had a delicate glow--an _assassin_[1] [1] Beauty-spot. cunningly placed there relieved their beauty in a wonderful way; she only needed a little mustache to make her a first-class mousquetaire. There were many other personages also represented in the tapestry--the kindly female attendant, the indispensable little Cupid--but they did not leave a sufficiently distinct outline in my memory to enable me to describe them. In those days I was quite young--not that I wish to be understood as saying that I am now very old; but I was fresh from college, and was to remain in my uncle's care until I could choose a profession. If the good man had been able to foresee that I should embrace that of a fantastic story-writer, he would certainly have turned me out of doors forthwith and irrevocably disinherited me, for he always entertained the most aristocratic contempt for literature in general and authors in particular. Like the fine gentleman that he was, it would have pleased him to have had all those petty scribblers who busy themselves in disfiguring paper, and speaking irreverentially about people of quality, hung or beaten to death by his attendants. Lord have mercy on my poor uncle! He really esteemed nothing in the world except the epistle to Zetulba. Well, then, I had only just left college. I was full of dreams and illusions. I was as naive as a _rosière_ of Salency, perhaps more so. Delighted at having no more pensums to make, everything seemed to me for the best in the best of all possible worlds. I believed in an infinity of things. I believed in M. de Florian's shepherdess with her combed and powdered sheep. I never for a moment doubted the reality of Madame Deshoulière's flock. I believed that there were actually nine muses, as stated in Father Jouvency's _Appendix de Diis et Heroïbus._ My recollections of Berquin and of Gessner had created a little world for me in which everything was rose-colored, sky-blue, and apple-green. Oh, holy innocence!--_sancta simplicitas_! as Mephistopheles says.