A HOMELY WOMAN'S CONFESSIONS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue XX, 19 May 1900, Page 941

A HOMELY WOMAN'S CONFESSIONS.

Perhaps no woman was ever better reconciled to positive ugliness in her own person than the Duchess of Orleans, the mother of the Regent d'Orleans, who governed France dining the minority of Louis XV. Thus she writes of her own ap|>earance am! manners: — “From my earliest years I was aware how ordinary my appearance w..s. ami did not like that people should look a* me attentively. I never paid any at tention to dress, because diamonds am! dress were sure to attract attention. On great days my husband us*d t*. make me rouge, which I did greatly against my will. One day I mad** the Countess Soissons laugh heartily. Sin asked me why I never turned my beau when 1 passed a mirror everybody else did. I answered. ‘Becans** I have too much self-love to bear th** sight of my own homeliness.' 1 must have been very homely in my youth. I had no sort of features, with little, twitching eyes, a short, stub nose, and long, thick lips. The whole of my physiognomy was far from attractive. “Nly face was large, with fat cheeks, and my figure was short and stumpy: in short. I was a very homely sort of person. Except for the goodness of my disposition, no one would have endured me. It was impossible to discover anything like intel’ig\ nee in my eyes, except with a microscope. Perhaps there was not on the face of th** earth such another pair of ugly hands as mine. The King often told me so. and set me laughing about it; for as f was (piite sure of being very ugly. I mad** up my mind to be always tin* first to laugh at it. This succeeded very well, though I must confers it furnished me with a good stock of materials for laughter. “On** thing* that always surprised me was how anybody eon Id ever fall in love with me. I was notoriously the most homely woman in tin* French court, and yet I was only nineteen when I was married. I often askeo my husband whether my looks did no: repel him. and what In* saw in in** that he should fall in love. To my questions I have never received a satisfactory answer, hut it seems to me that other qualities, in lack of beauty caused his attraction."