For a long time this characteristic sweetness appeared to spring from gracefulness of form and feature: a face of aristocratic oval; a swan neck, a wasp waist; in short a general effect of reed-like slightness and fragility, a veritable mantel ornament, so delicately balanced that to touch it was more than one dared, and that one was puzzled how so frail a thing had ever managed to stand on such tiny feet, to hold out such a poor little hand—a virginal figure of fifteen years.[171] This wonderfully pure ideal persisted in Spain; but in Italy one of the first signs of decadence was the preference for more sensual forms. The Florentines, with their fastidious ideal of elegance, were almost alone in resisting the current; good Firenzuola did not yield to it to any extent, and at most there was at Florence a small section in favour of muscle and robustness, of whom Michelangelo is the representative. But at Venice, a fine opulence of flesh, luminous and warm, wonderfully substantial and soft, “full of a delicious comfortableness,” carried all before it—a beauty such as the pagans have celebrated in their lyrics and such as the East adores: nothing seemed more charming. In France, the national spirit, always eclectic and vacillating, was neither idealistic nor materialistic enough to take any side in this dispute. Autant me plaist la grassette, Comme me plaist la maigrette.[172] —_Ronsard._ The great goddesses who ruled and dominated the classical epoch, Madame de Chateaubriand, Madame de Canaples,[173] Diana of Poitiers, were representatives of vigorous stocks; an old lusty blood coursed visibly enough through their veins; but they mastered it as they mastered everything, diluting it with an effeminacy which had, however, a charm of its own. The colour of the hair and eyebrows always appeared a characteristic factor in a woman’s expression; without fair hair there was no charm. According to a twelfth-century chronicler, the sweet Saint Godeliva of Bruges was called a “horrid crow” by her hag of a stepmother on account of her dusky hair; it was to her hair indeed that she owed the tribulations that won for her the aureole of sainthood. In all probability the dukes of Burgundy, when they created the order of the Golden Fleece, were thinking rather of the charming women with heads like a golden harvest-field than of the exploits of Jason. It is impossible to imagine Botticelli crowning Spring with black, or Raphael representing his Virgins as goddesses of night. The blonde had it all her own way. And yet even in this matter the fastidious Florentines did not commit themselves, and had something to say for the pretty dainty little dark heads that were to be met in the fields of Umbria. In France the chestnut locks which set off so many charming faces were greatly admired.