Lippincotts Magazine of Popular Literature and Science | Page 9

ze masters vairy difficile, not comme
les artists Français. Zey demand zat ze model pose during two hours
sans repose, and zey nevvair give of to drink to ze model."
"Did you return to Paris when you ennuied yourself so énormement?"
asked a yellow-haired English girl who had painted countless vaporous
and ravishing Eurydices and filmy Echoes from broad-waisted,

pug-nosed Cockney models, and who always declared that she would
recognize a "professional" even among the shining hosts of heaven.
"Non, mademoiselle. I rested at Londres to make la musique."
"The music?"
"Comme ça;" and the Italian made sundry rotary motions of the arm, as
if grinding an invisible hand-organ.
[Illustration: THE ELDER SWEDE AND ARAMINTA SHODDY.]
"Did you earn more money with the music or as model?" asked
Mademoiselle Émilie, the girl-artist from Madrid, with black hair dyed
golden, who always swore by Murillo's Virgins, and who did her work
dreamily, as if the motions of her hands were timed to the languorous
rhythm of some far-off, daintily-touched guitar beneath vine-wreathed
balcony and starlit sky.
"In Londres I gained more money as musician. In Angleterre zere is not
mooch love of ze Christ, ze St. John and ze Judas. It is not a Catholic
country, comme la France, and ze Anglaises aime bettaire ze gods of ze
old Greek hommes. In la France zey aime ze true religion, and I gain
mooch money, and am in ze Salon many times evairy year, because I
am ze best Christ in Paris."
A wail swept up from French, American, English, Swedish, Spanish,
Norwegian, Russian and West Indian bosoms.
"We'll embrace the religion and the gods of the old Greek hommes then,
or throw ourselves into the profoundest gulfs of infidelity, while we
remain in Paris," ejaculated Bostonia in a vigorous stage-aside.
"Have you a wife?" asked Madame Deschamps, a fashionable
portrait-painter.
"Oui, madame. Ma femme is Lucreza, whom you know. She has made
the nymphs and goddesses for a thousand pictures, but now she is so

much fat that the messieurs will have her only for the head, although
she still poses for the ensemble in the ateliers des dames."
Here the best Christ in Paris grinned satanically as a polyglot howl
went up from among the students.
"That's his tit for the tat of the 'Cheshire cat,'" laughed Madame Lafarge,
a French-American Corinne with an all-French moustache.
"We won't have Lucreza again if she is too fat to pose for the nude
except in a ladies' studio," snapped the elder Swede.
"Oh, I have forgotten to say zat she has upset ze pail since eight days,"
chuckled the man.
"Upset the pail?" And twenty pairs of eyes looked full of
interrogation-points.
"Giggle! giggle! giggle!" came sputteringly from behind Concordia's
easel as she gasped, "Don't you understand? He has improved his
English among the Americans in Gérôme's studio, and he means she
kicked the bucket eight days ago."
"Quelle langue! quelle langue est la langue Américaine!" sniffed the
elder Swede, wiping off a brushful of "turps" in her back hair.
Paletta twisted her head so as to peer through the forest of easels at the
last speaker.
"What daubs she must make!" she thought, gazing at spectacled green
eyes and hay-colored hair à la Chinoise with her fixed idea that "an
artistic nature always wrought a semblance of its own beauty upon its
outward form."
"What was the Greek religion?" questioned a girlish voice.
Paletta twisted her neck again. "What lovely ideals must blossom upon
her canvases!" she thought as she saw a fair vision of rose-tints,
creamy texture and sculptured lines ensphered in a halo of golden hair.

"Who is that poor woman who has so mistaken her vocation?" she
asked with compassionate gesture toward the coiffure à la Chinoise.
"That? Oh, that's the celebrated Swedish artist, Miss Thingumbobbia,
of whom you have heard, of course. She returns to Stockholm next
week to paint the king's portrait. Mon Dieu! but I would give all my
hair for the genius of her little finger!" answered pretty Mademoiselle
Hubert, scraping her palette viciously, as if it were responsible for her
artistic inferiority to the gifted Thingumbobbia.
"O-o-o-h!" gasped Paletta. "But who is the sweet creature with golden
hair, who looks infused with fair ideals to her very finger-tips?"
[Illustration: AN AMIABLE MADONNA!]
"She? Oh, she's Miss Araminta Shoddy from Michigan Avenue,
Chicago, who is finishing her education in Paris. She comes here twice
a week for drawing-lessons from the antique, and also in pursuit of
general information, I should think, judging from her questions. Only
yesterday she said, 'Ladies, who can tell me the costume of the Venus
de Melos? I have an idea that it would be stunning for my next
fancy-dress ball!'"
"Ladies," cried Miss San Francisco, invisible among the easels, "has
Professor Manley