Let no one insist that a truly beautiful girl appears to most advantage in a homely household dress. On the contrary, the beauty of woman, like that of flowers in a parterre, is then most attractive and irresistible when they are arrayed in their fullest pomp and magnificence. Say, then, oh lover! to whom I have before addressed myself, when thou for the first time beholdest the empress of thy heart--who had before worn a simple garb, now attired with splendour and gleaming, the _cynosure_ of a brilliant party--did not a new and nameless rapture vibrate through every nerve and vein? She would appear to you indeed so strange! but this, joined to the knowledge that she was in reality _the same_, heightened the charms by which thy soul was wholly subjected. What unspeakable pleasure, if thou could'st, by stealth, seize and press her hand in the crowd, and say to thyself, she, who is here the magnet of all eyes, is mine by indissoluble bonds, and lives for me alone! Thus I beheld Aurelia on that evening dressed with becoming splendour for her first introduction at court. Then the spirit of evil once more became powerful within me, and lifted up his internal voice, to which I now bent a willing ear--"Seest thou not now, Medardus," it began, "how thou triumph'st over all the conditional laws and limitations of this life--how Destiny now submits herself to thy will, and only knots more firmly the threads which thou thyself hadst spun?" There were many other women at court who might well have passed for beautiful, but before the dazzling charms of Aurelia, they faded away into utter insignificance. A kind of inspiration now seemed to take possession of the most insipid and common-place characters. Even the old courtiers gave up their usual strain of unmeaning talk, and visibly exerted themselves, in order to appear to the best advantage in the eyes of the beautiful stranger. Aurelia received all this homage with looks fixed on the ground, and with deep blushes; but now, when the Prince assembled the elder courtiers about himself, and many a handsome youth timidly and respectfully drew near her, she began, by degrees, to lose her embarrassment, and to seem more cheerful.