I flatter
myself that my Leila, Zuleika, Gulnare, Medora, and Haidee will always
vouch for my taste in beauty: these are the bright creations of my
fancy, with rounded forms, and delicacy of limbs, nearly so
incompatible as to be rarely if ever united; for where, with some rare
exceptions, do we see roundness of contour accompanied by lightness,
and those fairy hands and feet that are at once the type of beauty and
refinement. I like to shut myself up, close my eyes, and fancy one of
the creatures of my imagination, with taper and rose-tipped fingers,
playing with my hair, touching my cheek, or resting its little
snowy-dimpled hand on mine. I like to fancy the fairy foot, round and
pulpy, but small to diminutiveness, peeping from beneath the drapery
that half conceals it, or moving in the mazes of the dance. I detest
thin women; and unfortunately all, or nearly all plump women, have
clumsy hands and feet, so that I am obliged to have recourse to
imagination for my beauties, and there I always find them. I can so
well understand the lover leaving his mistress that he might write to
her, I should leave mine, not to write to, but to think of her, to
dress her up in the habiliments of my ideal beauty, investing her with
all the charms of the latter, and then adoring the idol I had formed.
You must have observed that I give my heroines extreme refinement,
joined to great simplicity and want of education.
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