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Updated: June 10, 2025
Yet behind and through them, as a coy beauty half reveals, half conceals, her charms, so the walls and buttes, the pinnacles and buttresses, took on a new and delicate beauty, a subtleness of charm and refinement that only such a veiling could produce. Every moment the panorama changed.
It is not stupendous or remarkably awesome; but it is grand, with a subtleness which is inexpressible.
But there was a mobility, a subtleness in his nature, an unconscious tact, which the mode of life and of mixing with men in America fosters and perfects, that made this sort of finesse inevitable to him, with any but a natural character; with whom, on the other hand, Redclyffe could be as fresh and natural as any Englishman of them all.
To give a correct idea of the character of woman's influence upon the literary style of that century, the words of Marmontel may be quoted: "He who wishes to write with precision, energy, and vigor, may live with man only; but he who in his style wishes to have subtleness, amenity, charm, flexibility, will do well, I think, to live with woman."
He was thankful that his guide was to be Belbeis, for this man was well known to him, and he would be able to talk freely on matters which, with a stranger, he would have to avoid. Belbeis had long ago proved his fidelity, and as to his "subtleness," of which Naoum had spoken, that was beyond doubt.
How like her that letter is; egotistical, vain, foolish; no, not foolish narrow, limited, but not foolish; worldly, oh, how worldly! and yet not repulsively so, for there always was in her a certain intensity of feeling that saved her from the commonplace, and gave her an inexpressible charm. Yes, she is a woman who can feel, and she has lived her life and felt it very acutely, very sincerely sincerely?... like a moth caught in a gauze curtain! Well, would that preclude sincerity? Sincerity seems to convey an idea of depth, and she was not very deep, that is quite certain. I never could understand her; a little brain that span rapidly and hummed a pretty humming tune. But no, there was something more in her than that. She often said things that I thought clever, things that I did not forget, things, that I should like to put into books. But it was not brain power; it was only intensity of feeling nervous feeling. I don't know ... perhaps.... She has lived her life ... yes, within certain limits she has lived her life. None of us do more than that. True. I remember the first time I saw her. Sharp, little, and merry a changeable little sprite. I thought she had ugly hands; so she has, and yet I forgot all about her hands before I had known her a month. It is now seven years ago. How time passes! I was very young then. What battles we have had, what quarrels! Still we had good times together. She never lost sight of me, but no intrusion; far too clever for that. I never got the better of her but once ... once I did, enfin! She soon made up for lost ground. I wonder what the charm was. I did not think her pretty, I did not think her clever; that I know.... I never knew if she cared for me, never. There were moments when.... Curious, febrile, subtle little creature, oh, infinitely subtle, subtle in everything, in her sensations subtle; I suppose that was her charm, subtleness. I never knew if she cared for me, I never knew if she hated her husband, one never knew her, I never knew how she would receive me. The last time I saw her ... that stupid American would take her downstairs, no getting rid of him, and I was hiding behind one of the pillars in the Rue de Rivoli, my hand on the cab door. However, she could not blame me that time and all the stories she used to invent of my indiscretions; I believe she used to get them up for the sake of the excitement. She was awfully silly in some ways, once you got her into a certain line; that marriage, that title, and she used to think of it night and day. I shall never forget when she went into mourning for the Count de Chambord. And her tastes, oh, how bourgeois they were! That salon; the flagrantly modern clock, brass work, eight hundred francs on the Boulevard St. Germain, the cabinets, brass work, the rich brown carpet, and the furniture set all round the room geometrically, the great gilt mirror, the ancestral portrait, the arms and crest everywhere, and the stuffy bourgeois sense of comfort; a little grotesque no doubt; the mechanical admiration for all that is about her, for the general atmosphere, the Figaro, that is to say Albert Wolf, l'homme le plus spirituel de Paris, c'est-
Sylvia, who had more cunning and subtleness than all the rest of her sex, thought it best to see Philander, and part with him on as good terms as she could, and that it was better he should think he yet had the absolute possession of her, than that he should return to France with an ill opinion of her virtue; as yet he had known no guilt of that kind, nor did he ever more than fear it with Octavio; so that it would be easy for her to cajole him yet a little longer, and when he was gone, she should have the world to range in, and possess this new lover, to whom she had promised all things, and received from him all assurances imaginable of inviolable love: in order to this then she consulted with Brilliard; and they resolved she should for a few days leave Antonet with her equipage, at that house where she was, and retire herself to the village where Philander had left her, and where he still imagined she was: she desired Brilliard to give her a day's time for this preparation, and it should be so.
But if we devote our whole attention to the drawing with the firm resolve to think of nothing else, we shall probably find that it is generally comic in proportion to the clearness, as well as the subtleness, with which it enables us to see a man as a jointed puppet.
M. Brunetière said: "Mme. de Lambert made Academicians; the Marquise de Prie made a queen of France; Mme. de Tencin made cardinals and ambassadors." The popular spirit in literature was one of subtleness, irony, superficial observations on manners and customs.
It seized the sensible and practical relations of all subjects submitted to it, and firmly held them in its tenacious grasp; it exposed these relations to the apprehension of those whose opinion or action it behooved him to influence, by methods direct and sincere, discarding mere ingenuity, and disdaining the subtleness of insinuation.
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