, monsieur; but he never acknowledged me."

"That was that he might leave you part of his fortune."

"He left me nothing; he made no will."

"Indeed! Poor little woman! The Marshal died suddenly of apoplexy. But,
come, madame, hope for the best. The State must do something for the
daughter of one of the Chevalier Bayards of the Empire."

Madame Marneffe bowed gracefully and went off, as proud of her success
as the Baron was of his.

"Where the devil has she been so early?" thought he watching the flow
of her skirts, to which she contrived to impart a somewhat exaggerated
grace. "She looks too tired to have just come from a bath, and her
husband is waiting for her. It is strange, and puzzles me altogether."

Madame Marneffe having vanished within, the Baron wondered what his
daughter was doing in the shop. As he went in, still staring at Madame
Marneffe's windows, he ran against a young man with a pale brow and
sparkling gray eyes, wearing a summer coat of black merino, coarse drill
trousers, and tan shoes, with gaiters, rushing away headlong; he saw him
run to the house in the Rue du Doyenne, into which he went.

Hortense, on going into the shop, had at once recognized the famous
group, conspicuously placed on a table in the middle and in front of the
door. Even without the circumstances to which she owed her knowledge
of this masterpiece, it would probably have struck her by the peculiar
power which we must call the _brio_--the _go_--of great works; and
the girl herself might in Italy have been taken as a model for the
personification of _Brio_.

Not every work by a man of genius has in the same degree that
brilliancy, that glory which is at once patent even to the most
ignoble beholder. Thus, certain pictures by Raphael, such as the famous
_Transfiguration_, the _Madonna di Foligno_, and the frescoes of the
_Stanze_ in the Vatican, do not at first captivate our admiration, as
do the _Violin-player_ in the Sciarra Palace, the portraits of the Doria
family, and the _Vision of Ezekiel_ in the Pitti Gallery, the _Christ
bearing His Cross_ in the Borghese collection, and the _Marriage of
the Virgin_ in the Brera at Milan. The _Saint John the Baptist_ of
the Tribuna, and _Saint Luke painting the Virgin's portrait_ in the
Accademia at Rome, have not the charm of the _Portrait of Leo X._, and
of the _Virgin_ at Dresden.

And yet they are all of equal merit. Nay, more. The _Stanze_, the
_Transfiguration_, the panels,