r
performed other strange antics.

It was the dancer again--surely the little Ruys must not be
abandoned--who, triumphing over the paternal selfishness, compelled the
sculptor to assent to a necessary separation, when Felicia was twelve
or thirteen years old; furthermore, she assumed the responsibility of
finding a suitable boarding school, and purposely selected a very rich
but very bourgeois establishment, pleasantly situated in a
sparsely-settled faubourg, in a huge old-fashioned mansion, surrounded
by high walls and tall trees,--a sort of convent, minus the restraint
and contempt for serious studies.

Indeed, a great deal of hard work was done at Madame Belin's
establishment, with no opportunities to go out except on great
festivals, and no communication with the outside world except a visit
from one's relatives on Thursday, in a little garden of flowering
shrubs, or in the vast parlor with the carved and gilded panels above
the doors. Felicia's first appearance in that almost monastic
institution caused considerable commotion; her costume, selected by the
Austrian ballet-dancer, her curly hair falling to the waist, her
ungainly, boyish bearing, gave rise to some ill-natured remarks; but
she was a Parisian and readily adapted herself to all situations, to
all localities. In a few days she wore more gracefully than any of the
others the little black apron, to which the most coquettish attached
their watches, the straight skirt--a stern and cruel requirement at
that period, when the prevailing fashion enlarged the circumference of
woman with an infinite number of ruffles and flounces--and the
prescribed arrangement of the hair, in two braids fastened together
well down on the neck, after the fashion of Roman peasants.

Strangely enough, the assiduous work of the classes, their tranquil
regularity, suited Felicia's nature, all intelligence and animation, in
which a taste for study was enlivened by an overflow of childish
spirits in the hours of recreation. Every one loved her. Among those
children of great manufacturers, Parisian notaries and gentleman-farmers,
a substantial little world by themselves, somewhat inclined to
stiffness and formality, the well-known name of old Ruys, and the
respect which is universally manifested in Paris for a high reputation
as an artist, gave to Felicia a position apart from the rest and
greatly envied; a position made even more brilliant by her success in
her studies, by a genuine