But there was absolute unanimity in favour of a soft complexion of creamy white. All men, whatever their nationality, whether idealists or not—poets and aesthetes, dandies, elegant or melancholy men, as Firenzuola and Tibaldeo[174] called themselves—united in praise of the charm and sweetness of the lily and the rose. As for the eyes, they are the very fount of charm; by their aid heart is linked with heart in exquisite communings, in them the soul ranges the whole compass of its utterance. The Italians were particularly fond of speaking eyes, black, velvety, dreamy or deep; the French, while by no means insensible to the charm of languorous Creole eyes, much preferred eyes full of animation and intelligence, and these were usually of a light grey or brownish colour. On one point they were almost unanimous: a French girl of piquant expression and mobile features, all sparkle from eyes to lips, was the top of admiration. Such are the few summary and exceedingly vague notions of charm, from the physical point of view, to which women could look for inspiration. They could choose among these various characteristics, or they could at least go some way towards them. There is no mystic virtue in the advice; the important thing is to succeed; but if a woman lacks any one of the recognised instruments of charm, it is better to look for another than to attempt the impossible. Women have been known to delight men merely by the beauty of a wide intellectual brow: Mademoiselle de Vieilleville’s charm lay in a sweet little lisp, and the fair Chanteloup’s in her delicious little mouth. A pretty pout, a little wanton laugh, lips fine and so red that a man asks himself “which is the cherry and which is the mouth?” the carriage of the body, the play of the features—all these and many other things may become the “fount of amorous sweets.” All that is necessary is that in one way or another a woman should enwrap herself with her sweetness, as with a goddess’s veil. Leonardo da Vinci sometimes painted good housewives, frank and precise in countenance, but he took no pleasure in them; he hardly regarded them as women: a bold look, he said, only suits women who are no longer women. Whenever he was in love with his model he has given her a modest port, one arm shielding her breast, and he has half submerged her in a kind of penumbra. In France a trim, sprightly, noticeably handsome woman was obliged to disguise herself in an air of languorous affability. The most stony-hearted of Frenchmen surrendered to “a sweet and gentle face,” “a sweet look, a sweet bearing, a sweet countenance.”