Entering Florence by the Porta Romana, you find, in the Via della Fornace, a dark-green door, which opens in to a paved court, once the entrance to a convent. Beyond stretches a cool, quiet garden; and all manner of birdcages and dovecotes remind you of Rosa Bonheur's fondness for pets. Through that quiet garden, hedged with laurel and cypress, you might have walked, but a little time ago, with a shrewd, sagacious, life-loving French woman, an aristocrat and a Legitimist, whose eyes had looked upon the guillotine, and who was proud of having suffered for her faith and country. She would lead you to her small parlor, furnished with ancient hangings, carved chairs, and gold-grounded Pre-Raphaelite pictures of great value. Here she would introduce you to her daughter, Félicie de Fauveau. A forehead low and broad; soft, brown eyes; an aquiline nose; a well-cut, well-closed mouth; a flexible, fine figure; a velvet skirt and jacket of the color of the "dead leaf;" a velvet cap of the same, drawn over blonde hair, cut square across the forehead, as in the picture of Faust,--this is what you see when you look at the artist; this is what Ary Scheffer painted and valued so, that no gold would buy the portrait while he lived. Fire, air, and water are in that organization: the movements of the arms are angular; but the hands are soft, white, fine, and royal. Born in Tuscany, she was early carried to Paris; whence she removed, when very young, to Limoux, Bayonne, and Besançon. A great taste for music and painting she inherited from her mother. Her studies were profound, and among them she pursued archæology and heraldry. At Besançon she painted in oils, but was not satisfied; and from the workmen who carved for the churches she got her first hint towards modelling. When her father died, she was ready to devote herself to the support of her family. When people told her it was unbecoming, she drew herself up: "Are you ignorant," she asked, "that an artist is a gentlewoman?" Benvenuto Cellini was her prototype; and to her may be attributed that revival of a taste for mediæval art which, proceeding from Paris, has had, of late years, so great an influence on England. Her first work was a group called "The Abbot." Encouraged by unlimited praise, she made a basso-relievo,--containing six figures, and representing Christina of Sweden in the fatal galley with Monaldeschi. This was in the last "Exposition des Beaux Arts," and received the gold medal from Charles X. in person.