This _séance_ of hypnotic, magnetic experiments was given by a new literary and theosophical set of young Frenchmen, called “the Adepts”; the people who assembled to witness the performance were members of the lower middle class, and ladies and gentlemen from all circles of society. The discovery of which I have spoken came upon me suddenly from under the giant roof of a straw hat trimmed with a wreath of roses, where I caught sight of a strange, death-like, glassy look in the eyes of a smiling beauty of uncertain age. I was struck by the number of cadaverous physiognomies which rendered it almost impossible to guess the age of Parisians, whether men or women. Young people wore the same expression as those of riper years, and even extreme youth had something ashen grey in the complexion, something that was like a breath of mildew, unpalpable, deceptive, as of premature old age. In the north everybody looks about as old as he is, not only according to the fixed sum of his years, but also according to the varying life-limit which is determined by a person’s vitality. There we have old and young and middle-aged. But here the majority are neither old nor young, and for the women there is no middle age. What is the reason? Is it entirely owing to the art of dress? Or is it due to that _memento mori_ of an ancient civilisation--a counterfeit susceptibility? When we compare the French fashion papers with the faces of young Frenchwomen, the former might be taken for portraits. Here and there the same sweet smile which renders the mouth small and pointed, the same studied charm, the same artificial personality and excessive caution which mask the woman’s real nature until all that is spontaneous about her--age, soul, instinct--is for ever lost. It is perfectly true that these expressionless faces are to be met with everywhere. In Germany there is a large percentage of ladies in good society whose faces look like copies of the illustrations in magazines provided for family reading. But beneath it all there is something else, something absolutely different, a kind of broad, and as yet unspoilt, natural foundation in the Teutonic race, which compares favourably with the more and more narrowed, almost extinct nature in the Gallic race. That which struck me most about these restless, expressionless eyes, was not the absence of soul in them which one notices in the German who broods over his beer and toddy, but an empty look such as you find in the eyes of a dead animal--an absence of feeling, a vacant stare, the Narcissus-look of self-reflecting satisfaction....