ce, du Bruel tolerated the
Superintendent of Fine Arts, believing that he himself was really
preferred. After six years this connection was almost a marriage. Tullia
has always been very careful to say nothing of her family; we have a
vague idea that she comes from Nanterre. One of her uncles, formerly
a simple bricklayer or carpenter, is now, it is said, a very rich
contractor, thanks to her influence and generous loans. This fact leaked
out through du Bruel. He happened to say that Tullia would inherit a
fine fortune sooner or later. The contractor was a bachelor; he had a
weakness for the niece to whom he is indebted.

"'He is not clever enough to be ungrateful,' said she.

"In 1829 Tullia retired from the stage of her own accord. At the age of
thirty she saw that she was growing somewhat stouter, and she had tried
pantomime without success. Her whole art consisted in the trick of
raising her skirts, after Noblet's manner, in a pirouette which inflated
them balloon-fashion and exhibited the smallest possible quantity of
clothing to the pit. The aged Vestris had told her at the very beginning
that this _temps_, well executed by a fine woman, is worth all the art
imaginable. It is the chest-note C of dancing. For which reason, he
said, the very greatest dancers--Camargo, Guimard, and Taglioni, all of
them thin, brown, and plain--could only redeem their physical defects by
their genius. Tullia, still in the height of her glory, retired before
younger and cleverer dancers; she did wisely. She was an aristocrat; she
had scarcely stooped below the noblesse in her _liaisons_; she declined
to dip her ankles in the troubled waters of July. Insolent and beautiful
as she was, Claudine possessed handsome souvenirs, but very little ready
money; still, her jewels were magnificent, and she had as fine furniture
as any one in Paris.

"On quitting the stage when she, forgotten to-day, was yet in the height
of her fame, one thought possessed her--she meant du Bruel to marry her;
and at the time of this story, you must understand that the marriage had
taken place, but was kept a secret. How do women of her class contrive
to make a man marry them after seven or eight years of intimacy? What
springs do they touch? What machinery do they set in motion? But,
however comical such domestic dramas may be, we are not now concerned
with them. Du Bruel was secretly married; the thing was done.

"Cursy before his marriage was supposed to be a