“Perhaps because of his want of spirit, and his perversity.”

“No, I believe it is something else.  People found a great, strong animal that could, if it liked, be just as difficult to manage, and resist just as well as a horse, and yet was quite content with the worst of food, required neither stable nor grooming, worked till it dropped, and never bit or kicked.  So they said, an animal that is strong enough to hurt us, and yet puts up with any kind of treatment, must necessarily be deadly stupid.  That is how it was.  People cannot believe that one may be good-tempered and uncomplaining and yet have any brains.  With them to be wicked and violent and pretentious is to be clever.  If the donkey would refuse to eat anything but oats and barley, and turned and rent anybody who annoyed him in the slightest degree, you would see how people would immediately have the highest respect for his intellect.”

“You seem to have a low opinion of your fellow-creatures, madame?”

“It is their own fault then,” she replied, gazing through the window into the courtyard.

After this conversation Wilhelm looked for the first time more attentively at his neighbor.  He had a general impression of her being tall and stout, with a remarkably clear, bright complexion.  Now he took in the details.  In spite of the fullness of her figure she was slender about the waist, and her small slim hands, with their tapering fingers and pink nails, retained the purity of their outline, and had by no means degenerated into mere cushions of fat.  The proudly-poised head was crowned by a wealth of heavy, pale brown hair with dull gold reflections in it, waving in soft, downy locks round her forehead.  The cheeks were very full but firm, and the well shaped, boldly modeled nose stood in exactly the right proportion to the rather large face.  The light brown eyes with their remarkably small pupils were conspicuously lively, and flashed and sparkled incessantly on all sides.  Their expression was extremely intelligent and generally mocking, and if you looked long at them you gained the somewhat uncomfortable impression that that cold clear glance could, on occasion, stab a heart as cruelly as would a dagger.  But her most striking feature was her mouth—­a sudden dash of violent coral-red in the opalescent white of her face.  This brutal effect of color exercised a peculiar fascination and riveted the attention.  The eye lingered upon those lips—­so voluptuously, so sinfully full, so burning, blood-red that in the chastest mind, even a woman’s, they must suggest the image of vampire-like kisses.  Take her for all in all, she was a magnificent creature, this woman of thirty, overflowing with health and life, in all her triumphant display of full-blown womanly beauty.  Not a man in the hotel but had looked at her in undisguised admiration, and if they had not yet ventured to make advances to her, it was because she intimidated them by her cold hauteur, or by the mocking twinkle of her eye.