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avalanche of stones.
Her little cottage, standing back from the street a short distance, is literally embowered in foliage.
The ground floor contains a dining-room and three sleeping apartments quite modestly furnished.
On the first floor, ascending to it by a carefully carpeted staircase, you come to Mademoiselle Bonheur's atelier.
This is hung with green velvet, and is filled with exquisite and bizarre objects of art; and, with its tapestry, inlaid floors, pictures, bronzes, pieces of armor, skins of wild animals for rugs, and branching horns of deer and oxen upon the walls, it forms a curious and brilliant salon. It is open for receptions on Fridays.
While courteously entertaining her guests Mademoiselle Bonheur still continues working.
“Allow me to resume my brush ; we can talk just as well together,” she says, after the first salutation.
She rises at six, and when the day closes she is still found at her easel, not leaving it until an hour after midnight. During this long period of work she is refreshed by now and then hearing reading and music.
It is said that George Sand is her favorite author, though it is difficult to understand how a character of such perfect simplicity and purity as Rosa Bonheur's could find the slightest satisfaction of mind or heart from such an author.
Evidently she yields to the irresistible charm of the style, feeling that the poison of the ideas has no danger for her.
She early decided not to marry, wedding herself to her art. During her visit in England, it was half jocosely and half seriously talked of, that Sir Edwin Landseer should marry her; but perhaps the fact of her vigorous rivalship in the same line of art daunted the amiable old bachelor.
It is said that when he first saw her “Horse fair,” he magnanimously and humorously exclaimed, “It surpasses me, though it's a little hard to be beaten by a woman.”
Mademoiselle Bonheur has made many journeys.
She has visited the picturesque portions of France, and roamed
S. M. Betts and Company. Hartford, Conn. 1871.
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