“He did not notice her faded cheeks, or the brick red blotches on her cheek-bones, the result of boredom and a certain amount of ill-health. His imagination seized, first of all, on those ardent eyes, those elegant curls that caught the candlelight, that dazzling whiteness – so many points of light that drew him like a moth to a candle-flame. Besides how could he judge dispassionately a woman whose soul spoke so intimately to his own? Her feminine exaltation, the ardour of the rather dated phrases that Mme de Bargeton had been repeating for a long time past, but which were new to Lucien, fascinated him the more because he was in a state of mind to admire everything.”
Honoré de Balzac, “Lost Illusions”
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 