The three girls were
on her left hand, and on the right of her husband were their three
brothers. The eldest son, Francis, resembled his father, or rather was
what his father must have been in all the freshness of boyhood; the
same form of blended strength and symmetry; the same dark eye, the same
determined air and regular features which in time would become strongly
marked. The second boy, Alfred, about eleven, was delicate, fair, and
fragile, like his mother; his sweet countenance, full of tenderness,
changed before the audience with a rapid emotion. The youngest son,
Michel, was an infant of four years, and with his large blue eyes and
long golden hair, might have figured as one of the seraphs of Murillo.
There was analogy in the respective physical appearances of the brothers
and the sisters. The eldest girl, Josephine, though she had only counted
twelve summers, was in stature, and almost in form, a woman. She was
strikingly handsome, very slender, and dark as night. Adelaide, in
colour, in look, in the grace of every gesture, and in the gushing
tenderness of her wild, yet shrinking glance, seemed the twin of Alfred.
The little Carlotta, more than two years older than Michel, was the
miniature of her mother, and had a piquant coquettish air, mixed with
an expression of repose in one so young quite droll, like a little opera
dancer.
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