You see, I haven't the means to pay for one, so the worthy woman is really her own mother.

She used to be a concierge, but she's not without intelligence.

Call her Madame; she makes a point of it." Florentine happened that night to have a friend with her,--a certain Marie Godeschal, beautiful as an angel, cold as a danseuse, and a pupil of Vestris, who foretold for her a great choregraphic destiny.
Mademoiselle Godeschal, anxious to make her first appearance at the Panorama-Dramatique under the name of Mariette, based her hopes on the protection and influence of a first gentleman of the bedchamber, to whom Vestris had promised to introduce her.

Vestris, still green himself at this period, did not think his pupil sufficiently trained to risk the introduction.

The ambitious girl did, in the end, make her pseudonym of Mariette famous; and the motive of her ambition, it must be said, was praiseworthy.