lantern by which to read the newspaper plaudits or criticisms before
they appeared in the morning. A yellow salon, its effect heightened by
trimmings of the color of Florentine bronze, was in harmony with the
rest of these magnificences, a further description of which would make
our pages resemble the posters of an auction sale. To find comparisons
for all these fine things, it would be necessary to go to a certain
house that was almost next door, belonging to a Rothschild.

Sophie Grignault, surnamed Florine by a form of baptism common in
theatres, had made her first appearances, in spite of her beauty,
on very inferior boards. Her success and her money she owed to Raoul
Nathan. This association of their two fates, usual enough in the
dramatic and literary world, did no harm to Raoul, who kept up the
outward conventions of a man of the world. Moreover, Florine's actual
means were precarious; her revenues came from her salary and her
leaves of absence, and barely sufficed for her dress and her household
expenses. Nathan gave her certain perquisites which he managed to levy
as critic on several of the new enterprises of industrial art. But
although he was always gallant and protecting towards her, that
protection had nothing regular or solid about it.

This uncertainty, and this life on a bough, as it were, did not alarm
Florine; she believed in her talent, and she believed in her beauty.
Her robust faith was somewhat comical to those who heard her staking her
future upon it, when remonstrances were made to her.

"I can have income enough when I please," she was wont to say; "I have
invested fifty francs on the Grand-livre."

No one could ever understand how it happened that Florine, handsome as
she was, had remained in obscurity for seven years; but the fact is,
Florine was enrolled as a supernumerary at thirteen years of age, and
made her debut two years later at an obscure boulevard theatre. At
fifteen, neither beauty nor talent exist; a woman is simply all promise.

She was now twenty-eight,--the age at which the beauties of a French
woman are in their glory. Painters particularly admired the lustre of
her white shoulders, tinted with olive tones about the nape of the neck,
and wonderfully firm and polished, so that the light shimmered over
them as it does on watered silk. When she turned her head, superb folds
formed about her neck, the admiration of sculptors. She carried on this
triumphant neck the small head