hide her beauty beneath all the false lines of fashion.
People observe, admire, criticise each other, exchange glances
contemptuous, disdainful, or curious, interrupted suddenly at the
passage of a celebrity, of that illustrious critic whom we seem still to
see, tranquil and majestic, his powerful head framed in its long hair,
making the round of the exhibits in sculpture followed by a dozen young
disciples eager to hear the verdict of his kindly authority. If the
sound of voices is lost beneath that immense dome, sonorous only under
the two vaults of the entrance and the exit, faces take on there an
astonishing intensity, a relief of movement and animation concentrated
especially in the huge, dark bay where refreshments are served, crowded
to overflowing and full of gesticulation, the brightly coloured hats
of the women and the white aprons of the waiters gleaming against the
background of dark clothes, and in the great space in the middle where
the oval swarming with visitors makes a singular contrast with
the immobility of the exhibited statues, producing the insensible
palpitation with which their marble whiteness and their movements as of
apotheosis are surrounded.

There are wings poised in giant flight, a sphere supported by four
allegorical figures whose attitude of turning suggests some vague
waltz-measure--a total effect of equilibrium well conveying the illusion
of the sweeping onward of the earth; and there are arms raised to give
the signal, bodies heroically risen, containing an allegory, a symbol
which stamps them with death and immortality, secures to them a place in
history, in legend, in that ideal world of museums which is visited by
the curiosity or the admiration of the nations.

Although Felicia's group in bronze had not the proportions of these
large pieces, its exceptional merit had caused it to be selected to
adorn one of the open spaces in the middle, from which at this moment
the public was holding itself at a respectful distance, watching, over
the hedge of custodians and policemen, the Bey of Tunis and his suite,
an array of long bernouses falling in sculptural folds, which had the
effect of placing living statues opposite the other ones.

The Bey, who had been in Paris since a few days before, and was the
lion of all the _premieres_, had desired to see the opening of the
exhibition. He was "an enlightened prince, a friend of art," who
possessed at the Bardo a gallery of remarkable Turkish