Her flatterers still spoke of her beauty. Her
conversation was dazzling, but it lacked charm: her talents forced
themselves upon one; her _bons mots_ took you by storm. Strength had
overcome everything like grace, and two hours' conversation with Madame
Emile de Girardin left one with a sick-headache or exhausted by fatigue.
Nevertheless, one of her most fervent admirers has uttered this singular
paradox about her: "She would be the first woman of the age, if she had
always talked and never written a line."
Her husband, Monsieur Emile de Girardin, was present, with his pale
face, lymphatic complexion, glassy eye, and forehead checkered with a
Napoleon-like lock. He was then, and has remained ever since, the most
exact personification of a pasteboard man of genius lighted by
histrionic foot-lights. He was a compound of the dandy, the sophist, and
the agitator. His talents lay in making people believe him in possession
of ideas, when he had none,--just as speculators disseminate the
illusion of their capital, when in reality they are worse than bankrupt.
He began what others have since completed,--that is, he made trade and
advertisements the sovereign masters of literature and newspapers.
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