, in heavy puddles, in shining trails in the
gutters, vainly chased by the street-scrapers and the scavengers, heaved
into enormous carts which carry it slowly towards Montreuil--promenading
it in triumph through the streets, always moving, and always springing
up again, growing through the pavements, splashing the panels of the
carriages, the breasts of the horses, the clothes of the passers-by,
spattering the windows, the door-steps, the shop-fronts, till one feared
that the whole of Paris would sink and disappear under this sorrowful,
miry soil where everything dissolves and is lost in mud. And it moves
one to pity to see the invasion of this dirt on the whiteness of the new
houses, on the parapets of the quays, and on the colonnades of the stone
balconies. There is some one, however, who rejoices at the sight, a
poor, sick, weary being, lying all her length on a silk-embroidered
divan, her chin on her clinched fists. She is looking out gladly through
the dripping windows and delighting in all the ugliness.

"Look, my fairy! this is indeed the weather I wanted to-day. See them
draggling along! Aren't they hideous? Aren't they dirty? What mire! It
is everywhere--in the streets, on the quays, right down to the Seine,
right up to the heavens. I tell you, mud is good when one is sad. I
would like to play in it, to make sculpture with it--a statue a hundred
feet high, that should be called 'My weariness.'"

"But why are you so miserable, dearest?" said the old dancer gently,
amiable and pink, and sitting straight in her seat for fear of
disarranging her hair, which was even more carefully dressed than usual.
"Haven't you everything to make you happy?" And for the hundredth time
she enumerated in her tranquil voice the reasons for her happiness: her
glory, her genius, her beauty, all the men at her feet, the handsomest,
the greatest--oh! yes, the very greatest, as this very day--But a
terrible howl, like the heart-rending cry of the jackal exasperated by
the monotony of his desert, suddenly made all the studio windows shake,
and frightened the old and startled little chrysalis back into her
cocoon.

A week ago, Felicia's group was finished and sent to the exhibition,
leaving her in a state of nervous prostration, moral sickness, and
distressful exasperation. It needs all the tireless patience of the
fairy, all the magic of her memories constantly evoked, to make life
supportable beside this restlessness, this wicked ange