, nothing but mud, in thick pools, in gleaming streaks along
the edge of the sidewalks, driven back in vain by automatic sweepers,
sweepers with handkerchiefs tied over their heads, and carted away on
enormous tumbrils which carry it slowly and in triumph through the
streets toward Montreuil; removed and ever reappearing, oozing between
the pavements, splashing carriage panels, horses' breasts, the clothing
of the passers-by, soiling windows, thresholds, shop-fronts, until one
would think that all Paris was about to plunge in and disappear beneath
that depressing expanse of miry earth in which all things are jumbled
together and lose their identity. And it is a pitiable thing to see how
that filth invades the spotless precincts of new houses, the copings of
the quays, the colonnades of stone balconies. There is some one,
however, whom this spectacle rejoices, a poor, ill, disheartened
creature, who, stretched out at full length on the embroidered silk
covering of a divan, her head resting on her clenched fists, gazes
gleefully out through the streaming window-panes and gloats over all
these ugly details:

"You see, my Fairy, this is just the kind of weather I wanted to-day.
See them splash along. Aren't they hideous, aren't they filthy? What
mud! It's everywhere, in the streets, on the quays, even in the Seine,
even in the sky. Ah! mud is a fine thing when you're downhearted. I
would like to dabble in it, to mould a statue with it, a statue one
hundred feet high, and call it, 'My Ennui.'"

"But why do you suffer from ennui, my darling?" mildly inquires the
ex-ballet-dancer, good-natured and rosy, from her armchair, in which she
sits very erect for fear of damage to her hair, which is even more
carefully arranged than usual. "Haven't you all that any one can need to
be happy?"

And she proceeds, in her placid voice, to enumerate for the hundredth
time her reasons for happiness, her renown, her genius, her beauty, all
men at her feet, the handsomest, the most powerful; oh! yes, the most
powerful, for that very day--But an ominous screech, a heart-rending
wail from the jackal, maddened by the monotony of her desert, suddenly
makes the studio windows rattle and sends the terrified old chrysalis
back into her cocoon.

The completion of her group and its departure for the Salon has left
Felicia for a week past in this state of prostration, of disgust, of
heart-rending, distressing irritation. It requires all of the old
f