Lippincotts Magazine of Popular Literature and Science | Page 9

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 ?a;" 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 Gér?me'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 given out the subject of our composition for next week?"
"Yes," answered a dozen voices--"'The Flight into Egypt.'"
"Oh, Miss Shoddy, Miss Shoddy, will you pose for my Virgin Mother?" cried another dozen.
[Illustration: THE MORNING LESSON.]
[Illustration: "HE'S GONE, GIRLS!"]
"Oh, Mees Shoddy, if you will pose for my Madonna I will pose for yours," echoed the Raphaelesque Thingumbobbia.
Just before noon the forest of easels swayed slightly beneath a breeze of excitement. A masculine step was heard at the door. The model's expression became if not divine, at least superhuman. The