48 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
I have little curiosity in my nature, but I should not be sorry 
to see the Venus of Milo, or the Venus of the Tortoise, try to 
make use of a pair of wings. I candidly confess that I have some 
trouble in getting an idea of these two even waltzing agreeably. 
The enthusiastic admirer of the antique, who bites his nails furi- 
ously at hearing my blasphemies, and whose rage amuses me, here 
interrupts me, to tell me that woman has not been created and 
sent into the world to waltz and to glide through the dreams of 
young collegians. I ask my interrupter a thousand pardons, but 
woman has been created and sent into the world to embellish out- 
destinies — to be the soul of our joys — the pivot of our attractions, 
in dreams as well as waking — by night as by day. 'Now woman, 
being legitimate queen only on condition of reigning by attraction, 
and all her graces, all her seductions, being able to develop them- 
selves completely only in the dance, it follows that the dance is a 
divine institution, and that every woman not formed for this exhila- 
rating exercise, is an incomplete creature. I may possibly deceive 
myself, but it seems to me that this reasoning is almost a rigorous 
geometrical demonstration. 
Let us see — let every man of sense judge and answer. Are, or 
are not, the Venus of Milo and the Venus of the Tortoise formed 
for the dance — especially for the waltz? The waltz, true dance 
of love ; the dance of two ; the elliptical dance, whose curve re- 
sembles that wdiich the planet describes round its focus ; the wild, 
intoxicating dance, wdiere all turns — both head and senses ; the 
protective dance, which allows the two lovers to isolate themselves 
amid the crowd — where the dancer, when moved, may choose 
either to abandon herself languishingly to the arms of her partner, 
to drink passion from his eyes, or even demonstrate to him, within 
the burning focus, the power of the law of attraction inversely 
jpro2)ortioned to the square of the distance ! ! ! In Herschel, where 
loves are free, where manners are consequently modest and reserved 
in the highest degree, the right of waltzing belongs only to lovers. 
Long ago, by the universal suffrage of nations, of whom I am 
here only the humble echo, the scepter of the dance has devolved 
upon the Parisian woman, as well for the grace of her step, her 
distinction, her supreme elegance, as for the pliancy of her stature, 
