is long pipe in his mouth, he would soon
forget himself amid the recollections of his youth. He described to her
the splendor of courts, the beauty of women, the magnificence of their
toilets, and the intrigues which he had seen going on around him. He
spoke to her of the men whose portraits he had painted, of the manners
and the jealousies behind the stage, and of the great singers who had
sung in his operas.

"Thus it came about, that, two years later, no one would have recognized
the lean, wretched-looking vagabond of the suburbs in this fresh, rosy
girl, with the lustrous eyes and the modest mien, whom they called in
the house the 'pretty artist in the fifth story.'

"And yet the change was only on the surface.

"Sarah was already too thoroughly corrupted, when the good German picked
her up, to be capable of being entirely changed. He thought he had
infused his own rough honesty into her veins: he had only taught her a
new vice,--hypocrisy.

"The soul remained corrupt; and all the charms with which it was
outwardly adorned became only so many base allurements, like those
beautiful flowers which unfold their splendor on the surface of
bottomless swamps, and thus lead those whom they attract to miserable
death.

"At that time, however, Sarah did not yet possess that marvellous
self-control which became one of her great charms hereafter; and at the
end of two years she could endure this peaceful atmosphere no longer;
she grew homesick after sin.

"As she was already a very fair musician, and her voice, trained by
a great master, possessed amazing power, she urged her old teacher to
procure her an engagement at one of the theatres. He refused in a manner
which made it clear to her that he would never change his mind on that
subject. He wanted to secure to his pupil one of those debuts which are
an apotheosis; and he had decided, as he told her, that she should not
appear in public till she had reached the full perfection of her voice
and her talent,--certainly not before her nineteenth or twentieth year.

"That meant she should wait three or four years longer,--a century!

"In former days Sarah would not have hesitated a moment; she would have
run away.

"But education had changed her ideas. She was quite able now to reflect
and to calculate. She asked herself where she could go, alone, without
money, without friends, and what she should do, and what would become of
her.

"She knew what destitution meant, a