white teeth, in regular array; beneath the chin sprang the white neck, descending full and round to the shoulder.  The powerful nape, white and without any little wandering hairs, protruded a little over the dress.  To her sloping shoulders were attached long arms, large or slender where they so should be.  What shall I say of her white hands, with their long fingers, and knuckles without knots, delicately ending in rosy nails attached to the flesh by a clear and single line?  I come to her bosom with its firm breasts, but short and high pointed, revealing the valley of love between them, to her round belly, her arched flanks.  Her hips were flat, her legs round, her calf large; she had a slender ankle, a lean and arched foot.  Such she was as I saw her, and that which her chemise hid was not of less worth.” (Houdoy, La Beaute des Femmes, p. 125, who quotes the original of this passage, considers it the ideal model of the mediaeval woman.)

In the twelfth century story of Aucassin et Nicolette, “Nicolette had fair hair, delicate and curling; her eyes were gray (vairs) and smiling; her face admirably modeled.  Her nose was high and well placed; her lips small and more vermilion than the cherry or the rose in summer; her teeth were small and white; her firm little breasts raised her dress as would two walnuts.  Her figure was so slender that you could inclose it with your two hands, and the flowers of the marguerite, which her toes broke as she walked with naked feet, seemed black in comparison with her feet and legs, so white was she.”

“Her hair was divided into a double tress,” says Alain of Lille in the twelfth century, “which was long enough to kiss the ground; the parting, white as the lily and obliquely traced, separated the hair, and this want of symmetry, far from hurting her face, was one of the elements of her beauty.  A golden comb maintained that abundant hair whose brilliance rivaled it, so that the fascinated eye could scarce distinguish the gold of the hair from the gold of the comb.  The expanded forehead had the whiteness of milk, and rivaled the lily; her bright eyebrows shone like gold, not standing up in a brush, and, without being too scanty, orderly arranged.  The eyes, serene and brilliant in their friendly light, seemed twin stars, her nostrils embalsamed with the odor of honey, neither too depressed in shape nor too prominent, were of distinguished form; the nard of her mouth offered to the smell a treat of sweet odors, and her half-open lips invited a kiss.  The teeth seemed cut in ivory; her cheeks, like the carnation of the rose, gently illuminated her face and were tempered by the transparent whiteness of her veil.  Her chin, more polished than crystal, showed silver reflections, and her slender neck fitly separated her head from the shoulders.  The firm rotundity of her breasts attested the full expansion of youth; her charming arms, advancing toward you, seemed to