ng them all. Never was
an artist received with greater honors and distinction. One performance
and her reputation was established. They suddenly found she was, as it
were, one of themselves. France was her native land, Paris her home and
so no honor they could bestow upon her would be too great. Pasdeloup,
the orchestral director, was present and then and there invited her to
play with his famous orchestra. So it was that the doors of fashionable
and artistic Europe were thrown open at one wave of the magic bow. Our
artist played the great Concerto in E by Mendelssohn with Pasdeloup's
magnificent orchestra at the hall of the Conservatory and won a splendid
triumph on the very spot where in the days of her poverty-tinted
childhood she first drew her bow before her severe old masters who had
tried so hard to bar the young feet out of the paths of art.

For a year Madam Urso remained in France studying, listening to the best
music to be heard, mingling with players of her own artistic stature
and, as it were, renewing her musical youth by drinking deep at the
fountains that flow from one of the great art centres of the world.
Dear, sleepy old Nantes was visited and once more she played in the same
old place where she first drew her bow in those almost forgotten days of
her childhood. Not a thing had changed. It seemed as if even the same
cats sat on the sunny walls and as if the same old women filled their
water jars at the fountains and toiled up and down the steep streets.
There were the geraniums in the windows just as she had seen them in her
childhood. Her father's organ stood in the dusty organ loft at the
church of the Holy Cross, and even the same grey cobwebs festooned the
arches above the seat where she used to sit and listen to the music. All
her father's old friends came to see her and brought their
grandchildren. The Town Hall would not contain the hundreds that
besieged the doors to see the Rose of Montholon, the woman who had made
their town famous.

Many places in France were visited, and many concerts were given in
Paris and other cities. It was a life of success, honors and happiness.
More than all, it was home. For all that, another home claimed her, she
must return to her adopted home, and in September 1866, Madam Urso
returned to this country with renewed musical strength, increased
ability and her talents brought to even higher culture than ever.

Every life has its dull spots--its period of unevent