CHAPTER XIX
MATRE PULCHRÂ, FILIA PULCHRIOR
Since Horace wrote that musical ode in which he expresses
a poet's admiration pretty equally divided between mother
and daughter, how many similes have been exhausted, how
many images distorted to convey the touching and suggestive
resemblance by which nature reproduces in the bud a beauty
that has bloomed to maturity in the flower! Amongst all the
peculiarities of race, family likeness is the commonest,
the most prized, and the least understood. Perhaps, because
the individuality of women is more easily affected by
extraneous influences, it seems usually less impressed upon
the sons than the daughters of a House. Then a girl often
marries so young, that she has scarcely done with her girl's
graces, certainly lost none of her woman's charms, ere she
finds a copy at her side as tall as herself; a very counterpart
in figure, voice, eyes, hair, complexion; all the externals
in which she takes most pride; whose similarity and companionship
are a source of continual happiness, alloyed only
by the dread of a contingency that shall make herself a
grandmother!
As they sat in the boudoir of the Hotel Montmirail, enjoying the cool evening breeze at an open window, the Marquise and her daughter might have been likened to a goddess and a nymph, a rose and a rosebud—what shall I say?—a cat and her kitten, or a cow and her calf! But although in voice, manner, gestures, and general effect, this similarity was so remarkable, a closer inspection might have found many points of difference; and the girl seemed, indeed, an ideal sketch rather than a finished portrait of
