were at first very modest. It had been agreed
that her husband should pay her an annual pension of fifteen hundred
francs. She would have been well satisfied to earn a like sum by her
literary efforts. She established herself in a small _mansarde_, a sort
of garret, and managed by great economy to furnish it so that Solange
could be made comfortable. She washed and ironed her fine linen with
her own hands. Not finding literary employment at once, and her slender
salary running very low, she adopted male attire for a while, as she
says, because she was too poor to dress herself suitably in any other.
The fashion of the period was favorable to her design. Men wore long
square-skirted overcoats, down to the heels. With one of these, and
trousers to match, with a gray hat and large woollen cravat, she might
easily pass for a young student.

"I cannot express the pleasure my boots gave me. I would gladly have
slept with them on. With these little iron-shod heels, I stood firm on
the pavement. I flew from one end of Paris to the other. I could have
made the circuit of the world, thus attired. Besides, my clothes did not
fear spoiling. I ran about in all weathers, I came back at all hours,
I went to the pit of every theatre. No one paid me any attention, or
suspected my disguise. Besides that, I wore it with ease; the entire
want of coquetry in my costume and physiognomy disarmed all suspicion.
I was too ill-dressed, and my manner was too simple, to attract or fix
attention. Women know little how to disguise themselves, even upon the
stage. They are unwilling to sacrifice the slenderness of their waists,
the smallness of their feet, the prettiness of their movements, the
brilliancy of their eyes; and it is by all these, nevertheless, it is
especially by the look, that they might avoid easy detection. There is a
way of gliding in everywhere without causing any one to turn round, and
of speaking in a low, unmodulated tone which does not sound like a
flute in the ears which may hear you. For the rest, in order not to
be remarked _as a man_, you must already have the habit of not making
yourself remarked _as a woman_."

This travesty, our heroine tells us, was of short duration;--it answered
the convenience of some months of poverty and obscurity. Its traditions
did not pass away so soon;--ten years later, her son, in his beardless
adolescence, was often taken for her, and sometimes amused himself
by indulging the error in those