clad in too short a skirt, in wretched garments that 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 paintings and chromo-lithographic reproductions of all the battles of the First Empire.  The moment he entered, the sight of the big Arab greyhound had struck him as he passed.  It was the sleughi all over, the true sleughi, delicate and nervous, of his own country, the companion of all his hunting expeditions.  He laughed in his black beard, felt the loins of the animal, stroked its muscles, seemed to want to urge it on still faster, while with nostrils