In the public recitals there participated also some of the maestro’s finished pupils who were already filling engagements at the theaters and had attained celebrity: the tenor Engel (known as Angèl); Mademoiselle Marimon, the _chanteuse légère_ of the Opéra Comique in Paris; and Jeanne Devriès of Brussels,—all three artists of the first rank. A young sister of the last-named, Fidès Devriès, had begun taking lessons only a short time before, and was the favorite of the maestro, the admiration of the whole class. She filled me with green-eyed envy. She was pretty as a picture—I could have forgiven her that, but she was sixteen years old, which put my twenty-three to shame, and she was making such rapid strides that although she had been in the school only a short time she already sang like a virtuoso and without the slightest nervousness. Ultimately she was engaged at the Paris Grand Opera, where she made her début as Ophelia with huge success. When I witnessed with what facility young Fidès learned the most difficult coloratures, with what correctness she read at sight, what peculiar magic dwelt in the timbre of her voice, and with what freedom and assurance of victory she moved on the little stage, always greeted and rewarded with the applause of the listeners and teachers, I was compelled to say to myself: “_That_ is talent, that is the special gift, that is the something that lies beyond ambition and industry, which one cannot attain but must _have_, and which I have not....” I was in and out of the house of the Princess of Mingrelia a great deal. I did not divulge to her anything of my artistic plans. She supposed the “Contessina” had come to Paris merely for the sake of being with her and her daughter, and she invited me to all her dinners and receptions. Together with her family and a numerous body of servants she occupied a suite in the Hôtel du Louvre, with private entrance and private stairway. In the long array of reception rooms, and especially in the salon filled with flowers and bric-a-brac where she usually kept herself, there was once more the odor of Russian cigarettes and orange flowers. I felt myself transported back to the Weckerlin villa at Homburg, and could not help thinking of my infatuation for the Georgian prince, the Bagratide Heraclius. I inquired about him.