WHERE WAS VENUS BORN ? 
4r 
versed in mythology, who one day said to me, that if the Greek 
poets had visited the shores of the Rhone, they would never have 
had the idea of causing Aphrodite to be born from the foam of 
the blue waves of the Ionian sea. And should the virgins of 
Austrasia, Neustria, and Aquitania, for analogous reasons, protest 
against the authenticity of the baptismal record of the goddess 
of Love, I should again associate myself with their legitimate pro- 
tests. 
Delicious types, do you know it, these daughters of the Rhone, 
with graceful sweep and proud and noble eye, quick, impulsive, 
smiling, brunette with blue eyes ; and the others also, the virgins 
of Austrasia, of Neustria, of Aquitania, pale or rosy, perilous, 
dreamy, blonde with black eyes, are sweet to see again in dreams. 
Still we have better in the beautiful country of France; there is 
the woman of Paris, pearl queen of this rich national casket, to which 
every country, every river, has contributed its jewel. Men have 
yet neither sculptured nor painted, nor written any thing Avhich 
so nearly approaches the ideal of feminine or of divine beauty as 
the type of the Parisian by blood, grisette or marquess, even citi- 
zen of the middle class. 
Mery asserts, and after him many other observers not less to be 
trusted, that it is not rare to meet with this type, with its most 
charming details, even in the deepest back shops of the street 
St. Denis. (See, for more ample details, in the History of a Con- 
spiracy at the Louvre, the portrait of Mademoiselle Eugenie Bon- 
chatain.) 
Here listen, young and old ; there is but one ideal woman, she 
who glides through the dreams of the lover of sixteen, the tempt- 
ing demon that comes to tear the unfortunate student from his 
cold cell, to draw him into the whirl of fantastic waltzes, to intox- 
icate and to lose him. Now I know in the world only the woman 
of Paris who can sit for an apparition, for the angel beloved in 
dreams, the Parisian woman who glides over the mud of the side- 
walks and does not stick there like other mortals, proof that this 
sylph-like form is animated by superior aromas. 
Many, in all times, have suspected the woman of Paris of hid- 
ing her wings. 
