tion with his _Juive d'Alger_,
which he exhibited on his return from a trip to Africa, and a portrait
of the Princesse de Salia, in 1874, made him considered by the
fashionable world the first portrait painter of his day. From that time
he became the favorite painter of Parisian women of that class, the most
skilful and ingenious interpreter of their grace, their bearing, and
their nature. In a few months all the distinguished women in Paris
solicited the favor of being reproduced by his brush. He was hard to
please, and made them pay well for that favor.

After he had become the rage, and was received everywhere as a man of
the world he saw one day, at the Duchesse de Mortemain's house, a young
woman in deep mourning, who was just leaving as he entered, and who, in
this chance meeting in a doorway, dazzled him with a charming vision of
grace and elegance.

On inquiring her name, he learned that she was the Comtesse de
Guilleroy, wife of a Normandy country squire, agriculturist and deputy;
that she was in mourning for her husband's father; and that she was very
intellectual, greatly admired, and much sought after.

Struck by the apparition that had delighted his artist's eye, he said:

"Ah, there is some one whose portrait I should paint willingly!"

This remark was repeated to the young Countess the next day; and that
evening Bertin received a little blue-tinted note, delicately perfumed,
in a small, regular handwriting, slanting a little from left to right,
which said:

"MONSIEUR:

"The Duchesse de Mortemain, who has just left my house, has assured
me that you would be disposed to make, from my poor face, one of your
masterpieces. I would entrust it to you willingly if I were certain that
you did not speak idly, and that you really see in me something that you
could reproduce and idealize.

"Accept, Monsieur, my sincere regards.

"ANNE DE GUILLEROY."

He answered this note, asking when he might present himself at the
Countess's house, and was very simply invited to breakfast on the
following Monday.

It was on the first floor of a large and luxurious modern house in the
Boulevard Malesherbes. Traversing a large salon with blue silk walls,
framed in white and gold, the painter was shown into a sort of boudoir
hung with tapestries of the last century, light and coquettish, those
tapestries _a la Watteau_, with their dainty coloring and graceful
figures, which seem to have been designed and executed by