These beautiful creatures all
have something in common: Bianca Capella, whose portrait is one of
Bronzino's masterpieces; Jean Goujon's Venus, painted from the famous
Diane de Poitiers; Signora Olympia, whose picture adorns the Doria
gallery; Ninon, Madame du Barry, Madame Tallien, Mademoiselle Georges,
Madame Recamier.--all these women who preserved their beauty in spite
of years, of passion, and of their life of excess and pleasure, have
in figure, frame, and in the character of their beauty certain
striking resemblances, enough to make one believe that there is in the
ocean of generations an Aphrodisian current whence every such Venus is
born, all daughters of the same salt wave.
Adeline Fischer, one of the loveliest of this race of goddesses, had
the splendid type, the flowing lines, the exquisite texture of a woman
born a queen. The fair hair that our mother Eve received from the hand
of God, the form of an Empress, an air of grandeur, and an august line
of profile, with her rural modesty, made every man pause in delight as
she passed, like amateurs in front of a Raphael; in short, having once
seen her, the Commissariat officer made Mademoiselle Adeline Fischer
his wife as quickly as the law would permit, to the great astonishment
of the Fischers, who had all been brought up in the fear of their
betters.
The eldest, a soldier of 1792, severely wounded in the attack on the
lines at Wissembourg, adored the Emperor Napoleon and everything that
had to do with the _Grande Armee_.
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