Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/239

 RACHEL 3t>3 RACHEL By Dutton Cook (1821-1858) It is told that Rachel Felix was born on March 24, 182 1, at Munf, near the town of Aarau, in the Canton of Aargau, Switzer- land ; the burgomaster of the dis- trict simply noting in his books that upon the day stated, at the lit- tle village inn, the wife of a poor pedler had given birth to a female child. The entry included no men- tion of family, name, or religion, and otherwise the event was not registered in any civil or religious record. The father and mother were Abraham Felix, a Jew, born in Metz, but of German origin, and Esther Haya, his wife. They had wandered about the continent dur- ing many years, seeking a living and scarcely finding it Several children were born to them by the wayside, as it were, on their jour- neyings hither and thither : Sarah in Germany, Rebecca in Lyons, Dinah in Paris, Rachel in Switzerland ; and there were other infants who did not long sur- vive their birth, succumbing to the austerities of the state of life to which they had been called. For a time, perhaps because of their numerous progeny, M. and Madame Felix settled in Lyons. Madame Felix opened a small shop and dealt in second-hand clothes ; M. Felix gave lessons in German to the very few pupils he could obtain. About 1830 the family moved to Paris. They were still miserably poor. The children Sarah and Rachel, usually carrying a smaller child in their arms or wheeling it with them in a wooden cart, were sent into the streets to earn money by singing at the doors of cafes and estaminets. A musi- cal amateur, one M. Morin, noticed the girls, questioned them, interested him- self about them, and finally obtained their admission into the Government School of Sacred Music in the Rue Vaugirard. Rachel's voice did not promise much, however ; as she confessed, she could not sing — she could only recite. She had received but the scantiest and meanest education ; she read with difficulty ; she