e as the child that she was,
laughing, joking, and telling her queer hobgoblin and fairy
stories, some of which she knew before indeed, but which he
related with a quaint simplicity and naivete, which gave them
a fresh charm for her; and under this new aspect of things,
she brightened up, began to lose her fits of dreaminess, to
chatter as in old times, and cheered many an hour of the
musician's solitary life. The American artist, too, left
Florence about this time for a visit to Rome; and during his
absence the _atelier_ was closed, and wandering through churches
and picture galleries were exchanged for long excursions into
the country with her father; by degrees dreams, fancies,
visions floated away, and Madelon became herself again.

She had gone through a phase, and one not altogether natural
to her, and which readily passed away with the abnormal
conditions that had occasioned it. She was by no means one of
those dreamy, thoughtful, often melancholy children who
startle us by the precocious grasp of their intellect, by
their intuitive perception of truths which we had deemed far
above their comprehension. Madelon's precocity was of quite
another order. In her quick, impulsive, energetic little mind
there was much that was sensitive and excitable, little that
was morbid or unhealthy. One might see that, with her, action
would always willingly take the place of reflection; that her
impulses would have the strength of inspirations; that she
would be more ready to receive impressions than to reason upon
them. Meditation, comparison, introspection, were wholly
foreign to this little, eager, impetuous nature, however they
might be forced upon it in the course of years and events; and
with her keen sense of enjoyment in all glad outward
influences, one might have feared that the realities of life
present to her would too readily preclude any contemplation of
its hidden possibilities, but for a lively, susceptible
imagination, which would surely intervene to prevent any such
tendency being carried out to its too prosaic end. It was
through appeals to her imagination and affection, rather than
to her reason and intellect, that Madeleine could be
influenced; and whatever large sympathies with humanity she
might acquire through life, whatever aspirations after a high
and noble ideal, whatever gleams of inspiration from the great
beyond that lies below the widest, as well as the narrowest
horizon, might visit her--all the