And now she glided upon the stage. The brilliant audience ceased their chatter as she appeared. The occasion took the character of what it was afterwards called in the newspapers--"a great solemnity." She was very young and was just at that period in the life of a girl when her figure is apt to be what old-fashioned people call raw-boned. She was tall, thin, and pale. Her face was not handsome. Her form gave no evidence of physical strength. She was received in a hush of silence. "Let us see," this great audience seemed to say, "what you really can do in this poetic art." Any one who could have connected sensuality or grossness with this girl would have been baser than a sybarite; and yet her dress was the conventional dress of ballet dancers--short to the calf of the leg but thickly clad above. She began. O Grace, you never found a prototype till now! O Painting, Sculpture, you paled before this supple, elastic, firm, yet dainty tread. At the conclusion of her first movement, when with a gush of sweet music she sprang like a fawn to the foot-lights, and extending her slender arms and delicate hands towards the audience, as if to ask, "Come, what is the verdict on me now?" a burst of enthusiastic applause, loud shouts of "Brava!" and "Bravissima!" "C'est magnifique!" waving of perfumed handkerchiefs, a deluge of sweet flowers formed the response. The whole evening was a series of triumphs. The Emperor and Empress sent an aid-de-camp behind the scene to offer her the Imperial congratulations. Marie Taglioni, accompanied by her noble husband, sought the girl also, and taking from her breast a magnificent diamond star, which had been given her in former days by the Emperor of Russia, "Here," said she, "take this the queen of dance, Marie Taglioni, is dead--long live the queen, Emma Livry!" [Illustration: TAGLIONI CONGRATULATING EMMA LIVRY.] As I passed out amongst the dense crowd, the writer continues, I saw a woman of middle age, and respectably dressed, leaning against one of the marble columns in the vestibule. Her face was flushed and she was wiping tears from her eyes. "You weep, Madonna?" said a gentleman who was passing. "Yes, Monsieur," she replied, "but it is with joy. Who would not be proud of such a daughter, and of such a tribute to her genius?"