to make acquaintance; but he did not lightly entrust to others
the secrets of his life. He was the idol of a necessitous mother,
who had brought him up at the cost of the severest privations.
Mademoiselle Schinner, the daughter of an Alsatian farmer, had
never been married. Her tender soul had been cruelly crushed,
long ago, by a rich man, who did not pride himself on any great
delicacy in his love affairs. The day when, as a young girl, in
all the radiance of her beauty and all the triumph of her life,
she suffered, at the cost of her heart and her sweet illusions,
the disenchantment which falls on us so slowly and yet so
quickly--for we try to postpone as long as possible our belief in
evil, and it seems to come too soon--that day was a whole age of
reflection, and it was also a day of religious thought and
resignation. She refused the alms of the man who had betrayed
her, renounced the world, and made a glory of her shame. She gave
herself up entirely to her motherly love, seeking in it all her
joys in exchange for the social pleasures to which she bid
farewell. She lived by work, saving up a treasure for her son.
And, in after years, a day, an hour repaid her amply for the long
and weary sacrifices of her indigence.

At the last exhibition her son had received the Cross of the
Legion of Honor. The newspapers, unanimous in hailing an unknown
genius, still rang with sincere praises. Artists themselves
acknowledged Schinner as a master, and dealers covered his
canvases with gold pieces. At five-and-twenty Hippolyte Schinner,
to whom his mother had transmitted her woman's soul, understood
more clearly than ever his position in the world. Anxious to
restore to his mother the pleasures of which society had so long
robbed her, he lived for her, hoping by the aid of fame and