almost a marriage. Tullia has always been very careful to say nothing
of her family; we have a vague idea that she comes from Nanterre. One
of her uncles, formerly a simple bricklayer or carpenter, is now, it
is said, a very rich contractor, thanks to her influence and generous
loans. This fact leaked out through du Bruel. He happened to say that
Tullia would inherit a fine fortune sooner or later. The contractor
was a bachelor; he had a weakness for the niece to whom he is
indebted.

"'He is not clever enough to be ungrateful,' said she.

"In 1829 Tullia retired from the stage of her own accord. At the age
of thirty she saw that she was growing somewhat stouter, and she had
tried pantomime without success. Her whole art consisted in the trick
of raising her skirts, after Noblet's manner, in a pirouette which
inflated them balloon-fashion and exhibited the smallest possible
quantity of clothing to the pit. The aged Vestris had told her at the
very beginning that this _temps_, well executed by a fine woman, is
worth all the art imaginable. It is the chest-note C of dancing. For
which reason, he said, the very greatest dancers--Camargo, Guimard,
and Taglioni, all of them thin, brown, and plain--could only redeem
their physical defects by their genius. Tullia, still in the height of
her glory, retired before younger and cleverer dancers; she did
wisely. She was an aristocrat; she had scarcely stooped below the
noblesse in her _liaisons_; she declined to dip her ankles in the
troubled waters of July. Insolent and beautiful as she was, Claudine
possessed handsome souvenirs, but very little ready money; still, her
jewels were magnificent, and she had as fine furniture as any one in
Paris.