Many men do not know the meaning of the word “charm”; they speak of beauty as savants or as grocers might, not as faithful worshippers. If you pull women to pieces, if you judge them as you would a yard of calico, a donkey or a slave, you will see naturally but a form of flesh; you may estimate its geometrical dimensions, count on your fingers thirty or thirty-six special beauties; if you profess an intellectual standpoint, you will perhaps go so far as to measure the cranium, and that will be all. You will be content as an artist to produce a “semblance of life,” by dint of scrupulous attention to detail; you will not perceive what it is that speaks to us, fascinates us. Charm is not expressed in terms of arithmetic or algebra: it is an art, perhaps the highest of all arts, because more than any other, more even than poetry or music, it speaks from soul to soul; it is a sort of witchery, a woman’s knack, as it were, of enveloping all around her in an invisible net. It is not purely intellectual, but avails itself of physical means and disdains everything in the way of formulae. The Italians, adoring this delightful art, have vainly devoted innumerable and often very prolix writings to the attempt to fathom it. All their reasonings are condensed in this vague sentence of Firenzuola:[170] “A beautiful woman is one who is universally pleasing”; and Firenzuola is no better able than the rest to say why she is pleasing. If we were speaking of a good housewife, it would be easy to catalogue her virtues: the talents of a managing woman, a woman who can look after one’s health, keep the books and train the children, have often been computed. Of a charming woman, never! Each one has her own secret. And yet the art of charming is very widespread. To that art the Italian women owed their positions as queens of the world (or, to satisfy Montaigne, let us say the “regents”); they were not superior to Frenchwomen in beauty of form or in originality of soul, but among them there were more “beautiful women,” that is to say, captivating women, than elsewhere. They were imbued with platonic sweetness, had acquired an indescribable magnetism, a perfume of human graciousness, so holy, so all-pervading that it seemed to purify the air and make the world a temple instead of a hospital: like the precious spikenard poured long ago upon the feet of the Saviour, all soiled with the dust of the world.