When she died those who attended her funeral wept like children, saying that she was too beautiful to have been an ordinary mortal, and that there was something supernatural in her countenance. All her life she had been called the beautiful Mme. X. At the time of my debut at the Folies-Bergère Gab was fourteen years old. One day her mother said to her: “There is a new foreign dancer whom everybody is going to see. We will see her at a matinee.” On reaching the theatre to buy seats the day before the performance they asked about me at the ticket office. Gab’s mother, whose beauty captivated everybody, had no trouble in getting all the information she wanted. The following dialogue ensued: “Is she pretty?” asked Gab’s mother. “No, she is not pretty,” was the reply. “Is she common, ordinary?” “No, she has an individuality of her own.” “Tall?” “Rather slight than tall.” “Is she young?” “Yes, I suppose so, but I could not swear to it.” “Is she brunette or blonde?” “She has brown hair and blue eyes, very blue.” “Is she smart?” “Oh, no. Not smart. She is anything but that. She is a queer sort of girl who seems to think of nothing but her work.” “Is she retiring?” “Well, yes. She knows nobody and sees nobody. She has continued to be quite unacquainted in Paris. She lives on the third storey at the end of a court in a house to the rear of the Folies-Bergère, and she never goes out unless with the manager of the theatre or his wife and with her mother, who never leaves her.” “Does her dancing weary her greatly?” “After the dance she is so tired that they have to carry her home and she goes to bed at once. The first time she came here she stayed at the Grand Hotel, but the manager has given her the _appartement_ of which I have been speaking. He has had a door let in at the rear of the stage, so that she can return to her rooms without having to go upon the street. She remains forty-five minutes on the stage. The white dance alone lasts eleven minutes. That is very fatiguing for her; she sticks at it too long, but the public is never willing to let her stop.” “Is she amiable?” “Well, she does not know a word of French, but she smiles all the time, and says, ‘bong-jour’.” At this moment the manager, M. Marchand, who had come near the ticket office, and who fell victim to the irresistible charm of Gab’s mother, joined in the conversation. “She is a very complex personality, Miss Loie Fuller,” he said. “She has no patience but displays nevertheless an incredible amount of perseverance. She is always rehearsing with her electric apparatus, engaged in search of new effects, and she sometimes keeps her electricians at work until six o’clock in the morning. No one would venture to make the slightest suggestion to her about this; overwork seems to agree with her. She stops neither for dinner nor for supper. She is endlessly seeking for combinations of light and colour.” Then he added, as if aside: