Her chin, white and rather fat, betrayed the
violence of passion. Her hands and arms were worthy of a sovereign.
But she had one ineradicable sign of low birth,--her foot was short
and fat. No inherited quality ever caused greater distress. Florine
had tried everything, short of amputation, to get rid of it. The feet
were obstinate, like the Breton race from which she came; they
resisted all treatment. Florine now wore long boots stuffed with
cotton, to give length, and the semblance of an instep. Her figure was
of medium height, threatened with corpulence, but still well-balanced,
and well-made.
Morally, she was an adept in all the attitudinizing, quarrelling,
alluring, and cajoling of her business; and she gave to those actions
a savor of their own by playing childlike innocence, and slipping in
among her artless speeches philosophical malignities. Apparently
ignorant and giddy, she was very strong on money-matters and
commercial law,--for the reason that she had gone through so much
misery before attaining to her present precarious success. She had
come down, story by story, from the garret to the first floor, through
so many vicissitudes! She knew life, from that which begins in Brie
cheese and ends at pineapples; from that which cooks and washes in the
corner of a garret on an earthenware stove, to that which convokes the
tribes of pot-bellied chefs and saucemakers.
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