These personal emotions, mingling with the literary enchantments of the poets, caused Jacqueline’s pen to fly over her paper without effort, and she produced a composition so far superior to anything she usually wrote that it left the lucubrations of her companions far behind.  M. Regis, the professor, said so to the class.  He was enthusiastic about it, and greatly surprised.  Belle, who had been always first in this kind of composition, was far behind Jacqueline, and was so greatly annoyed at her defeat that she would not speak to her for a week.  On the other hand Colette and Dolly, who never had aspired to literary triumphs, were moved to tears when the “Study on the comparative merits of Three Poems, ’Le Lac,’ ‘Souvenir,’ and ‘La Tristesse d’Olympio,’” signed “Mademoiselle de Nailles,” received the honor of being read aloud.  This reading was followed by a murmur of applause, mingled with some hisses which may have proceeded from the viper of jealousy.  But the paper made a sensation like that of some new scandal.  Mothers and governesses whispered together.  Many thought that that little de Nailles had expressed sentiments not proper at her age.  Some came to the conclusion that M. Regis chose subjects for composition not suited to young girls.  A committee waited on the unlucky professor to beg him to be more prudent for the future.  He even lost, in consequence of Jacqueline’s success, one of his pupils (the most stupid one, be it said, in the class), whose mother took her away, saying, with indignation, “One might as well risk the things they are teaching at the Sorbonne!”

This literary incident greatly alarmed Madame de Nailles!  Of all things she dreaded that her daughter should early become dreamy and romantic.  But on this point Jacqueline’s behavior was calculated to reassure her.  She laughed about her composition, she frolicked like a six-year-old child; without any apparent cause, she grew gayer and gayer as the time approached for the execution of her plot.

The evening before the day fixed on for the first sitting, Modeste, the elderly maid of the first Madame de Nailles, who loved her daughter, whom she had known from the moment of her birth, as if she had been her own foster-child, arrived at the studio of Hubert Marien in the Rue de Prony, bearing a box which she said contained all that would be wanted by Mademoiselle.  Marien had the curiosity to look into it.  It contained a robe of oriental muslin, light as air, diaphanous—­and so dazzlingly white that he remarked: 

“She will look like a fly in milk in that thing.”

“Oh!” replied Modeste, with a laugh of satisfaction, “it is very becoming to her.  I altered it to fit her, for it is one of Madame’s dresses.  Mademoiselle has nothing but short skirts, and she wanted to be painted as a young lady.”

“With the approval of her papa?”

“Yes, of course, Monsieur, Monsieur le Baron gave his consent.  But for that I certainly should not have minded what the child said to me.”