At Lausanne I saw a young girl of eleven or twelve by whose beauty I was exceedingly struck.  She was the daughter of Madame de Saconai, whom I had known at Berne.  I do not know her after history, but the impression she made on me has never been effaced.  Nothing in nature has ever exercised such a powerful influence over me as a pretty face, even if it be a child’s.

The Beautiful, as I have been told, is endowed with this power of attraction; and I would fain believe it, since that which attracts me is necessarily beautiful in my eyes, but is it so in reality?  I doubt it, as that which has influenced me has not influenced others.  The universal or perfect beauty does not exist, or it does not possess this power.  All who have discussed the subject have hesitated to pronounce upon it, which they would not have done if they had kept to the idea of form.  According to my ideas, beauty is only form, for that which is not beautiful is that which has no form, and the deformed is the opposite of the ‘pulchrum’ and ‘formosum’.

We are right to seek for the definitions of things, but when we have them to hand in the words; why should we go farther?  If the word ‘forma’ is Latin, we should seek for the Latin meaning and not the French, which, however, often uses ‘deforme’ or ‘difforme’ instead of ‘laid’, ugly, without people’s noticing that its opposite should be a word which implies the existence of form; and this can only be beauty.  We should note that ‘informe’ in French as well as in Latin means shapeless, a body without any definite appearance.

We will conclude, then, that it is the beauty of woman which has always exercised an irresistible sway over me, and more especially that beauty which resides in the face.  It is there the power lies, and so true is that, that the sphinxes of Rome and Versailles almost make me fall in love with them though, the face excepted, they are deformed in every sense of the word.  In looking at the fine proportions of their faces one forgets their deformed bodies.  What, then, is beauty?  We know not; and when we attempt to define it or to enumerate its qualities we become like Socrates, we hesitate.  The only thing that our minds can seize is the effect produced by it, and that which charms, ravishes, and makes me in love, I call beauty.  It is something that can be seen with the eyes, and for my eyes I speak.  If they had a voice they would speak better than I, but probably in the same sense.

No painter has surpassed Raphael in the beauty of the figures which his divine pencil produced; but if this great painter had been asked what beauty was, he would probably have replied that he could not say, that he knew it by heart, and that he thought he had reproduced it whenever he had seen it, but that he did not know in what it consisted.

“That face pleases me,” he would say, “it is therefore beautiful!”

He ought to have thanked God for having given him such an exquisite eye for the beautiful; but ‘omne pulchrum difficile’.