Explore "The Parisians, Book III" by Edward Bulwer-lytton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Contessa di Rimini received her visitors in a boudoir furnished with much apparent simplicity, but a simplicity by no means inexpensive. The draperies were but of chintz, and the walls covered with the same material, -- a lively pattern, in which the prevalents were rose-colour and white; but the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the china stored in the cabinets or arranged on the shelves, the small knickknacks scattered on the tables, were costly rarities of art.
The Contessa herself was a woman who had somewhat passed her thirtieth year, -- not strikingly handsome, but exquisitely pretty. "There is," said a great French writer, "only one way in which a woman can be handsome, but a hundred thousand ways in which she can be pretty; " and it would be impossible to reckon up the number of ways in which Adeline di Rimini carried off the prize in prettiness.