This daughter of the shadows was thoroughbred.
She was beautiful in the two ways-- style and rhythm.
Style is the form of the ideal; rhythm is its movement.
We have said that Fantine was joy; she was also modesty.
To an observer who studied her attentively, that which breathed from her athwart all the intoxication of her age, the season, and her love affair, was an invincible expression of reserve and modesty.She remained a little astonished.
This chaste astonishment is the shade of difference which separates Psyche from Venus.Fantine had the long, white, fine fingers of the vestal virgin who stirs the ashes of the sacred fire with a golden pin.
Although she would have refused nothing to Tholomyes, as we shall have more than ample opportunity to see, her face in repose was supremely virginal; a sort of serious and almost austere dignity suddenly overwhelmed her at certain times, and there was nothing more singular and disturbing than to see gayety become so suddenly extinct there, and meditation succeed to cheerfulness without any transition state.This sudden and sometimes severely accentuated gravity resembled the disdain of a goddess.