"Oh! what a sweet boudoir!" she cried,
looking about her. "Blue satin hangings always produce an admirable
effect. How cool it is! Ah! the lovely picture!" she added, rising and
standing in front of a magnificently framed painting.
We stood for a moment gazing at that marvel of art, which seemed the
work of some supernatural brush. The picture represented Adonis
stretched out on a lion's skin. The lamp, in an alabaster vase,
hanging in the centre of the boudoir, cast upon the canvas a soft
light which enabled us to grasp all the beauties of the picture.
"Does such a perfect creature exist?" she asked me, after examining
attentively, and not without a sweet smile of satisfaction, the
exquisite grace of the outlines, the attitude, the color, the hair, in
fact everything.
"He is too beautiful for a man," she added, after such a scrutiny as
she would have bestowed upon a rival.
Ah! how sharply I felt at that moment those pangs of jealousy in which
a poet had tried in vain to make me believe! the jealousy of
engravings, of pictures, of statues, wherein artists exaggerate human
beauty, as a result of the doctrine which leads them to idealize
everything.
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