As her husband would not allow her to go on the stage, she gave lessons, and sang in some bourgeois salons.

As a result of living in the artificial world of compositions for voice and piano, she had contracted a species of sentimental frenzy.
She was romance itself.

In her mouth the words "love" and "passion" seemed to have eighty syllables, she uttered them with so much expression.

Oh, expression! That was what Mistress Dobson placed before everything, and what she tried, and tried in vain, to impart to her pupil.
'Ay Chiquita,' upon which Paris fed for several seasons, was then at the height of its popularity.

Sidonie studied it conscientiously, and all the morning she could be heard singing: "On dit que tu te maries, Tu sais que j'en puis mourir." [They say that thou'rt to marry Thou know'st that I may die.] "Mouri-i-i-i-i-r!" the expressive Madame Dobson would interpose, while her hands wandered feebly over the piano-keys; and die she would, raising her light blue eyes to the ceiling and wildly throwing back her head.