The fame his talent had won him having made
him one of the artists most dear to his country, he was beginning
to feel free from want, and to use his own expression, was
enjoying his last privations. Instead of going to his work in one
of the studios near the city gates, where the moderate rents had
hitherto been in proportion to his humble earnings, he had
gratified a wish that was new every morning, by sparing himself a
long walk, and the loss of much time, now more valuable than
ever.
No man in the world would have inspired feelings of greater
interest than Hippolyte Schinner if he would ever have consented
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.
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