"Clemence complain! She would not complain if she suffered martyrdom." Madame Regnault looked imploringly at her mother, but she went on more sternly than before: "If Clemence had a spark of spirit she would never have had Leonie in the house. It is a shame for her to be made a slave to the opera-singer's girl, and I am not the only one who thinks so." "Pardon me, madame," responded her son-in-law, "the conversation is too exciting for me. I have the honor to wish you a good-morning;" and he bowed himself out with the most exasperating courtesy. "Oh, mother, what have you done?" cried Madame Regnault, trembling and tearful. "How could you make him so angry?" "How _could_ I, indeed! I wish I were his wife a little while: he wouldn't find it so easy to tyrannize over me. I don't know where you got your disposition from: you didn't take it from me, that's certain." "Jacques," said Colonel Regnault to the porter as he left the house, "when Madame Dumesnil calls to see your mistress hereafter, let me know it, and remember that I am never at home." Leonie, though she felt a certain hardness in the manner of Madame Dumesnil when she happened to meet her, was wholly unaware of what was passing in the heart of Madame Regnault, who had a genuine sympathetic interest in the 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!"