end their days, as also nuns of the various orders whose cloisters had been destroyed during the Revolution. Some of these preserved within their hearts a generous instinct of maternity, which Julienne easily managed to waken. She fell into the habit of running across to break the rule of everlasting silence in that fairly cheerful environment, and, in defiance of the prohibition against intimacy, she turned the old ladies into personal friends. She listened attentively, and remembered much, and forty years later she could describe correctly the names, appearance, and habits of that picturesque group, somewhat archaic, but invariably courteous and witty.

Perhaps because of this slight lifting of the veil, Julienne began already, at the age of sixteen, to fix her eager gaze beyond the cloister and the gate. Perhaps also some instinct of dignity and self-respect urged her to learn something of the world before entering the novitiate to pronounce her vows. However this may be, it seems certain that, on the solemn occasion of her presentation to the Archbishop of Paris, Monsignor Quelen, as a postulant, she managed to convey that her vocation was of the frailest, and her desire for the world, deeply rooted. The prelate understood, and signified to the nuns that this particular lamb desired to wander. That very evening Julienne left the convent.

Here follows a somewhat obscure interlude in the girl’s life. We meet her next among the pupils of the sculptor Pradier, in 1825.

James Pradier: to those of our generation this name recalls merely a number of groups and statues: statues more graceful than chaste, groups more elegant than virile; the work of a master who aimed at rivalling Praxiteles, but only succeeded in treading in the footsteps of Clodion.

Pradier, however, only needs a careful biographer to acquire another kind of celebrity: that of an artist, grand viveur, magnificent and vain, careless and weak, born too late to lead without scandal the frivolous life he loved, too early to acquire by industry the fortune needed for the indulgence of his tastes.

Twice a week his studio was transformed into a drawing-room, and his receptions were attended by a most varied company: painters and poets, models, actresses, dames of high degree, politicians and men of the sword—all society, in short, liked to be seen in the Rue de l’Abbaye.

Clad in high boots, cut low in front, in violet velvet trousers and a coat of the same material decorated with Polish brandebergs, flanked by a Scotch greyhound almost as big as himself, the master of the house received his visitors, listened to them, talked with them, without interrupting his work; he created fresh marvels with the chisel while the conversation flowed unrestrained, and thus his labours became simultaneously a gossip and a spectacle.

In the novel excitement of surroundings so brilliant, so varied, and of morals so easy, Julienne committed the imprudence which was to settle the fate of her whole life. Thanks to her independent spirit, and still more to her beauty, she very soon established her position in Pradier’s house. She came there often, remained long, and consented to pose for him.[2]

And when, one day, the sculptor desired for himself this flower, so superior in delicacy and aroma to those usually found in the studios, he had but to bend down and pluck it.

CLAIRE PRADIER AS A CHILD.
From an unpublished drawing by Pradier.

He made Julienne his mistress in 1825. In 1826 she gave him a little daughter whom we shall meet again later. But now arose difficulties of a practical nature. James Pradier, ex-Prix de Rome, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Membre de l’Institut, Professeur de l’École des Beaux-Arts, could not with propriety, according to his ideas, marry a model. He does not dream of it for an instant, but, as he wishes to do the girl some kindness, however unsuitable, he manages to insinuate her into the theatrical world, and to put her on the boards. Having friends in Brussels, he decrees that she shall go thither to study and make her first appearance; and, as she needs guidance, advice, and protection, he writes her almost every day long letters, in which platitudes alternate with vulgarity. The correspondence continues, wordy and trivial, interminable and foolish, a repulsive mixture of boasting and preaching. Does Julienne show distaste for vaudeville, Pradier proclaims that form of acting to be the most charming in the world, and places it far above tragedy, which he pronounces tiresome and chilling. If Julienne complains that she has but one dress, Pradier tells her that only the leading lights of the stage possess more. If she ventures a timid request for money, he answers that he has none himself, and offers her a book of fairy-tales illustrated under his supervision.

She had to keep herself alive somehow, and when the poor thing had pledged everything she possessed at the pawnbroker’s, she wrote plaintively: “This is the only money my talents have earned for me so far.” She might perhaps have been reduced to some desperate measure, had not chance placed her in the path of Félix Harel.

Although an incorrigible Bonapartist, and consequently a conspirator by trade, Harel seems to have been above all a man of the theatre: in the midst of his political preoccupations, one can always discern his predilection for things pertaining to the stage. He also had a very definite conviction that politics and the drama, statesmen and ballet-dancers, have always been closely linked together. So, whether he was for the moment pamphleteer, financier, or prefect, whether he was holding an appointment, or in full flight, he always had a finger in some theatrical pie, either as a director, a manager, or a private adviser. At the time he first met Julienne, he was filling the latter capacity at the Théâtre Royal, in Brussels. He presented the young woman. Without further training than that which Pradier had directed from afar, we know that she made her first appearance in Brussels, at the beginning of the year 1829—to be exact, on February 17th.

On that day she informs Pradier that her début has been successful, and that the Brussels press is favourable. He at once thanks Providence and decides that she can henceforth support herself by her talent. He writes: “Is not this a great pleasure to you? Does it not lift a weight from your heart, you who have such a noble soul? How sweet is the bread one has earned so honourably! For my part, I feel that all your faults are condoned by the trouble you are taking. Your perseverance will be rewarded, never doubt it. Go on working! Time can never hang heavy when one is labouring honestly; study carries more flowers than thorns.”

Having spoken thus, the artist returned to his business and his pleasures, not without having exhorted Julienne to remain in Brussels as long as possible. He was not ignorant of the passionate desire of the young woman to see her babe once more, but he feared that, if she should not find an engagement in Paris like the one she enjoyed in Brussels, she would again be, morally at least, on his hands. Therefore, redoubling his cautious advice and his counsels of prudence, he implored her not to relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.

However, nothing deterred her.