The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume 4Maupassant, Guy de
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The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume 4
Maupassant, Guy de
French fiction -- Translations into English; Short stories, French -- Translations into English
This Goldkind is a striking type of our modern society, and the novel of
that name contains all the elements of a classic novel, although of
course in a crude, unfinished state. What an exact reflection of our
social circumstances Leo Wolfram gave in that story our present
reminiscences will show, in which a lady of that race plays the principal
part.
It may be ten years ago, that every day four very stylishly dressed
persons went to dine in a corner of the small dining-room of one of the
best hotels in Vienna, who, both there and elsewhere, gave occasion
for a great amount of talk. They were an Austrian landowner, his charming
wife, and two young diplomatists, one of whom came from the North, while
the other was a pure son of the South. There was no doubt that the lady
came in for the greatest share of the general interest in every respect.
The practiced observer and discerner of human nature easily recognized
in her one of those characters which Goethe has so aptly named
"problematical," for she was one of those individuals who are always
dissatisfied and at variance with themselves and with the world, who are
a riddle to themselves, and who can never be relied on, and with the
interesting and captivating, though unfortunate contradictions in her
nature, she made a strong impression on everybody, even by her mere
outward appearance. She was one of those women who are called beautiful,
without their being really so. Her face, as well as her figure, was
wanting in aesthetic lines, but there was no doubt that, in spite of that,
or perhaps on that very account, she was the most dangerous, infatuating
woman that one could imagine.
She was tall and thin, and there was a certain hardness about her figure,
which became a charm through the vivacity and grace of her movements; her
features harmonized with her figure, for she had a high, clever, cold
forehead, a strong mouth with sensual lips, and an angular, sharp chin,
the effect of which was, however, diminished by her slightly turned-up,
small nose, her beautifully arched eyebrows, and her large, animated,
swimming blue eyes.
In her face, which was almost too full of expression for a woman, there
was as much feeling, kindness and candor as there was calculation,
coolness and deceit, and when she was angry and drew her upper lip up, so
as to show her dazzlingly white teeth, it had even a devilish look of
wickedness and cruelty, and at that time, when women still wore their own
hair, the beauty of her long, chestnut plaits, which she fastened on the
top of her head like a crown, was very striking. Besides this, she was
remarkable for her elegant, tasteful dresses, and a bearing which united
to the dignity of a lady of rank that undefinable something which makes
actresses and women who belong to the higher classes of the _demi-monde_
so interesting to us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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