great brotherhood. But it was a
pitiful thing to see the little maid exposed to the free and easy
manners of the habitues of the house, the incessant going and coming of
models, the discussions concerning an art that is purely physical, so
to speak; and at the uproarious Sunday dinner-table, too, sitting in
the midst of five or six women, with all of whom her father was on the
most intimate terms, actresses, dancers, singers, who, when dinner was
at an end, smoked with the rest, their elbows on the table, revelling
in the salacious anecdotes so relished by the master of the house.
Luckily, childhood is protected by the resistant power of innocence, a
polished surface over which all forms of pollution glide harmlessly.
Felicia was noisy, uproarious, badly brought up, but was untainted by
all that passed over her little mind because it was so near the ground.

Every summer she went to pass a few days with her godmother, Constance
Crenmitz, the elder Crenmitz, who was for so long a time called by all
Europe the "illustrious dancer," and who was living quietly in
seclusion at Fontainebleau.

The arrival of the "little devil" introduced into the old lady's life,
for a time, an element of excitement from which she had the whole year
to recover. The frights that the child caused her with her audacious
exploits in leaping and riding, the passionate outbreaks of that
untamed nature, made the visit both a delight and a terrible trial to
her,--a delight, because she worshipped Felicia, the only domestic tie
left the poor old salamander, retired after thirty years of _battus_ in
the glare of the footlights; a trial, because the demon pitilessly
pillaged the ex-dancer's apartments, which were as dainty and neat and
sweet-smelling as her dressing-room at the Opera, and embellished with
a museum of souvenirs dated from all the theatres in the world.

Constance Crenmitz was the sole feminine element in Felicia's
childhood. Frivolous, shallow, having all her life kept her mind
enveloped in pink swaddling-clothes, she had at all events a dainty
knack at housekeeping, and agile fingers clever at sewing,
embroidering, arranging furniture, and leaving the trace of their deft,
painstaking touch in every corner of a room. She alone undertook to
train that wild young plant, and to awaken with care the womanly
instincts in that strange creature, on whose figure cloaks and furs,
all the elegant inventions of fashion, fell in folds too stiff, o