for filling the
aristocratic Chapel of Missions again with the touching spectacle of one
of those adult baptisms which carry one back to the first days of the
Faith, far away on the banks of the Jordan; baptisms soon to be followed
by a first communion, a confirmation, when baptismal vows are renewed;
occasions when a godmother may accompany her godchild, guide the young
soul, share in the naive transports of a newly awakened belief, and
may also display a choice of toilettes, delicately graduated to the
importance of the sentiment of the ceremony. But not every day does it
happen that one of the leaders of finance brings to Paris an Armenian
slave as his wife.

A slave! That was the blot in the past of this woman from the East,
bought in the bazaar of Adrianople for the Emperor of Morocco, then
sold, when he died and his harem was dispersed, to the young Bey Ahmed.
Hemerlingue had married her when she passed from this new seraglio,
but she could not be received at Tunis, where no woman--Moor, Turk or
European--would consent to treat a former slave as an equal, on account
of a prejudice like that which separates the creoles from the best
disguised quadroons. Even in Paris the Hemerlingues found this
invincible prejudice among the small foreign colonies, constituted,
as they were, of little circles full of susceptibilities and local
traditions. Yamina thus passed two or three years in a complete solitude
whose leisure and spiteful feelings she well knew how to utilize,
for she was an ambitious woman endowed with extraordinary will and
persistence. She learned French thoroughly, said farewell to her
embroidered vests and pantaloons of red silk, accustomed her figure and
her walk to European toilettes, to the inconvenience of long dresses,
and then, one night at the opera, showed the astonished Parisians
the spectacle, a little uncivilized still, but delicate, elegant, and
original, of a Mohammedan in a costume of _Leonard's_.

The sacrifice of her religion soon followed that of her costume. Mme.
Hemerlingue had long abandoned the practices of Mohammedan religion,
when M. le Merquier, their friend and mentor in Paris, showed them that
the baroness's public conversion would open to her the doors of
that section of the Parisian world whose access became more and
more difficult as society became more democratic. Once the Faubourg
Saint-Germain was conquered, all the others would follow. And, in fact,
when, after the announ