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Antoine de Channeville seized the wheel of the phaeton for support, gasped several gasps, and said he would come.

He was getting barely enough to eat out of his work, anyway, although he was a very worthy young fellow. And he came.

He and the Tall Lady were married about six months after.

“And about the Brute and–and the divorce!”

“Gracious goodness! How do I know? I guess the Brute died or something; anyway, Antoine and the Tall Lady are man and wife, and are devoted lovers besides. They have served Madame Rosalie most loyally for these fifteen years. They say Madame Rosalie has made her will and has left them the mansion and everything in it for their ownest own, with a tidy sum besides to put on interest.”

It was four o’clock when we got back to the railroad-station at Fontainebleau. We missed the train we expected to take, and had an hour to wait. White Pigeon said she did not care so very much, and I’m sure I didn’t. So we sat down in the bright little waiting-room, and White Pigeon told me many things about Madame Rosalie and her early life that I had never known before.

* * * * *

Early in the century there lived in Bordeaux a struggling artist (artists always struggle, you know) by the name of Raymond Bonheur. He found life a cruel thing, for bread was high in price and short in weight, and no one seemed to appreciate art except the folks who had no money to buy. But the poor can love as well as the rich, and Raymond married. In his nervous desire for success, Raymond Bonheur said that if he could only have a son he would teach him how to do it, and the son would achieve the honors that the world withheld from the father.

So the days came and went, and a son was expected–a firstborn–an heir. There wasn’t anything to be heir to except genius, but there was plenty of that. The heir was to bear the name of the father–Raymond Bonheur.

Prayers were offered and thanksgivings sung.

The days were fulfilled. The child was born.

The heir was a girl.

Raymond Bonheur cursed wildly and tousled his hair like a bouffe artist. He swore he had been tricked, trapped, seduced, undone. He would have bought strong drink, but he had no money, and credit, like hope, was gone.

The little mother cried.

But the baby grew, although it wasn’t a very big baby. They named her Rosa, because the initial was the same as Raymond, but they always called her Rosalie.

Then in a year another baby came, and that was a boy. In two years another, but Raymond never forgave his wife that first offense. He continued to struggle, trying various styles of pictures and ever hoping he would yet hit on what the public desired. Mr. Vanderbilt had not yet made his famous remark about the public, and how could Raymond plagiarize it in advance?

At last he got money enough to get to Paris–ah, yes, Paris, Paris, there talent is appreciated!

In Paris another baby was born–it was looked upon as a calamity. The poor little mother of the four little shivering Bonheurs ceased to struggle. She lay quite still, and they covered her face with a white sheet and talked in whispers, and walked on tiptoe, for she was dead.

When an artist can not succeed, he begins to teach art–that is, he shows others how. Raymond Bonheur put his four children out among kinsmen in four different places, and became drawing-master in a private school. Rosa Bonheur was ten years old: a pug-nosed, square-faced little girl in a linsey-woolsey dress, wooden shoon, with a yellow braid hanging down her back tied with a shoestring. She could draw–all children can draw–and the first things children draw are animals.