e development of her remarkable powers, playing her
accompaniments unweariedly for hours daily and giving her the benefit of
her own delicate and highly-cultivated taste. They were happy years for
Leonie. Her young soul, full of the inspiration and power of genius,
felt its wings growing. There is an atmosphere of art in Paris which is
powerfully stimulating to any one of aesthetic tendencies; and how
exhilarating was this subtle atmosphere to Leonie! The Conservatoire,
with its seventy professors and its thousand students, its competitions,
concerts and public exercises, stimulated her zeal and inspired ever
higher ideals that made close, hard study the play of her fresh and
delighted faculties. Once a week her father took her to the opera. It
happened that the first opera she heard was _Faust_, and she sat as if
in a dream, white and scared, seeming to see in the scenes the spectre
of her mother. But this impression wore away, and ere many weeks had
passed her heart dilated, her eyes kindled with the triumphs of the
singer, and she felt as Correggio when he looked on Raphael's _St.
Cecilia_ and exclaimed, "I, too, am a painter!"

Thus the days went on, not too slowly, till Leonie had entered her
nineteenth year and approached the close of her studies. The finest
concerts of Paris and the most exclusive are those of the Conservatoire,
six in number, which occur once a fortnight from the middle of January
to the middle of April. Leonie had often sung in the small concert-hall
at examinations and private exercises, but now she was to sing in the
Salle de Spectacle for the celebrated Societe des Concerts. This
wonderful company is composed mostly of the professors and teachers at
the Conservatoire, and it is a rare honor for a pupil to sing or play at
these concerts; but Leonie was a rare pupil, and whatever may be said of
the jealousy of artists, I hold that true genius always exults in the
recognition of genius. Leonie sang in each of the six concerts of her
last year at the Conservatoire, and her singing gave exquisite delight
to the appreciative listeners: the applause was heart-felt,
enthusiastic, inspiring. But on the last night her father's rapture and
pride reached their height. The beautiful concert-hall, so refined and
classic with its Pompeii-like decorations, was filled with the most
brilliant audience of a most brilliant city. The symphony had ended, and
Leonie was to sing some selections from the opera of _Fi