ed, for the walls were completely covered with
the most interesting silhouettes and drawings by painters who later
became famous, to say nothing of the verses made by Stevenson, which
would now have been a priceless memorial of those youthful days.

Among the joyous coterie was the American painter Will H. Low, who
writes thus of Fanny Osbourne in his _Chronicle of Friendships_:

"One evening at Grez we saw two new faces, mother and daughter, though
in appearance more like sisters; the elder, slight, with delicately
moulded features and vivid eyes gleaming from under a mass of dark
hair; the younger of more robust type, in the first precocious bloom
of womanhood."

Another of the company, Mr. Birge Harrison, writing in the _Century
Magazine_ of December, 1916, expresses his mature judgment of her as
he knew her at the little French village:

[Illustration: Robert Louis Stevenson in the French days.]

"Among a few women who were doing serious work at this place was the
lady, 'Trusty, dusky, vivid, and true,' to whom Robert Louis Stevenson
inscribed the most beautiful love song of our time. Mrs. Osbourne
could not have been at that time more than thirty-five years of age--a
grave and remarkable type of womanhood, with eyes of a depth and
sombre beauty that I have never seen equalled--eyes, nevertheless,
that upon occasion could sparkle with humor and brim over with
laughter. Yet upon the whole Mrs. Osbourne impressed me as first of
all a woman of profound character and serious judgment, who could, if
occasion called, have been the leader in some great movement. But she
belonged to the quattrocento rather than to the nineteenth century.
Had she been born a Medici, she would have held rank as one of the
remarkable women of all time. That she was a woman of intellectual
attainments is proved by the fact that she was already a magazine
writer of recognized ability, and that at the moment when Stevenson
first came into her life she was making a living for herself and her
two children with her pen. But this, after all, is a more or less
ordinary accomplishment, and Mrs. Osbourne was in no sense ordinary.
Indeed, she was gifted with a mysterious sort of over-intelligence,
which is almost impossible to describe, but which impressed itself
upon every one who came within the radius of her influence. Napoleon
had much of this; likewise his arch enemy, the great Duke of
Wellington; and among women, Catherine of Russia and perhap