he ice of reflection. This
transposition is, in truth, an additional explanation of the strangeness
of her life and the nature of her talent. She observed men at an age
when most women can only see one man; she despised what other women
admired; she detected falsehood in the flatteries they accept as truths;
she laughed at things that made them serious. This contradiction of her
life with that of others lasted long; but it came to a terrible end; she
was destined to find in her soul a first love, young and fresh, at an
age when women are summoned by Nature to renounce all love.

Meantime, a first affair in which she was involved has always remained
a secret from the world. Felicite, like other women, was induced to
believe that beauty of body was that of soul. She fell in love with a
face, and learned, to her cost, the folly of a man of gallantry, who saw
nothing in her but a mere woman. It was some time before she recovered
from the disgust she felt at this episode. Her distress was perceived by
a friend, a man, who consoled her without personal after-thought, or,
at any rate, he concealed any such motive if he had it. In him Felicite
believed she found the heart and mind which were lacking to her former
lover. He did, in truth, possess one of the most original minds of our
age. He, too, wrote under a pseudonym, and his first publications were
those of an adorer of Italy. Travel was the one form of education which
Felicite lacked. A man of genius, a poet and a critic, he took Felicite
to Italy in order to make known to her that country of all Art. This
celebrated man, who is nameless, may be regarded as the master and maker
of "Camille Maupin." He bought into order and shape the vast amount of
knowledge already acquired by Felicite; increased it by study of the
masterpieces with which Italy teems; gave her the frankness, freedom,
and grace, epigrammatic, and intense, which is the character of his own
talent (always rather fanciful as to form) which Camille Maupin modified
by delicacy of sentiment and the softer terms of thought that are
natural to a woman. He also roused in her a taste for German and English
literature and made her learn both languages while travelling. In Rome,
in 1820, Felicite was deserted for an Italian. Without that misery she
might never have been celebrated. Napoleon called misfortune the midwife
of genius. This event filled Mademoiselle des Touches, and forever, with
that contempt for men which