One of them, named Florine, a tall, delicately slender, and elegant girl, with the air and form of Diana Huntress, was of a pale brown complexion.  Her thick black hair was turned up behind, where it was fastened with a long golden pin.  Like the two other girls, her arms were uncovered to facilitate the performance of her duties about and upon the person of her charming mistress.  She wore a dress of that gay green so familiar to the Venetian painters.  Her petticoat was very ample.  Her slender waist curved in from under the plaits of a tucker of white cambric, plaited in five minute folds, and fastened by five gold buttons.  The third of Adrienne’s women had a face so fresh and ingenuous, a waist so delicate, so pleasing, and so finished, that her mistress had given her the name of Hebe.  Her dress of a delicate rose color, and Grecian cut, displayed her charming neck, and her beautiful arms up to the very shoulders.  The physiognomy of these three young women was laughter loving and happy.  On their features there was no expression of that bitter sullenness, willing and hated obedience, or offensive familiarity, or base and degraded deference, which are the ordinary results of a state of servitude.  In the zealous eagerness of the cares and attentions which they lavished upon Adrienne, there seemed to be at least as much of affection as of deference and respect.  They appeared to derive an ardent pleasure from the services which they rendered to their lovely mistress.  One would have thought that they attached to the dressing and embellishment of her person all the merits and the enjoyment arising from the execution of a work of art, in the accomplishing of which, fruitful of delights, they were stimulated by the passions of love, of pride, and of joy.

The sun beamed brightly upon the toilet-case, placed in front of the window.  Adrienne was seated on a chair, its back elevated a little more than usual.  She was enveloped in a long morning-gown of blue silk, embroidered with a leaf of the same color, which was fitted close to her waist, as exquisitely slender and delicate as that of a child of twelve years, by a girdle with floating tags.  Her neck, delicately slender and flexible as a bird’s, was uncovered, as were also her shoulders and arms, and all were of incomparable beauty.  Despite the vulgarity of the comparison, the purest ivory alone can give an idea of the dazzling whiteness of her polished satin skin, of a texture so fresh and so firm, that some drops of water, collected and still remaining about the roots of her hair from the bath, rolled in serpentine lines over her shoulders, like pearls, or beads, of crystal, over white marble.