The Nabob, Volume 2 | Page 8

and in the broad aisle in the centre, where the swarm of promenaders en vignette forms a striking contrast to the immobility of the statues, the unconscious palpitation with which their chalky whiteness and their glorified attitudes are encompassed.
There are gigantic wings spread for flight, a sphere upheld by four allegorical figures, whose attitude, as if they were twirling their burden, suggests a vague waltz measure, a marvel of equilibrium which perfectly produces the illusion of the earth's revolution; and there are arms raised as a signal, bodies of heroic size, containing an allegory, a symbol that brings death and immortality upon them, gives them to history, to legend, to the ideal world of the museums which nations visit from curiosity or admiration.
Although Felicia's bronze group had not the proportions of those productions, its exceptional merit had procured for it the honor of a position at one of the points of intersection of the aisles in the centre, from which the public was standing respectfully aloof at that moment, staring over the shoulders of the line of attendants and police officers at the Bey of Tunis and his suite, a group of long burnous, falling in sculptural folds, which made them seem like living statues confronting the dead ones. The bey, who had been in Paris for a few days, the lion of all the first nights, had expressed a desire to see the opening of the Salon. He was "an enlightened prince, a friend of the arts," who possessed a gallery of amazing Turkish pictures on the Bardo, and chromo-lithographic reproductions of all the battles of the First Empire. The great Arabian hound had caught his eye as soon as he entered the hall of sculpture. It was the slougui to the life, the genuine slender, nervous slougui of his country, the companion of all his hunts. He laughed in his black beard, felt the animal's loins, patted his muscles, seemed to be trying to rouse him, while, with dilated nostrils, protruding teeth, every limb outstretched and indefatigable in its strength and elasticity, the aristocratic beast, the beast of prey, ardent in love and in the chase, drunk with his twofold drunkenness, his eyes fixed on his victim, seemed to be already tasting the delights of his victory, with the end of his tongue hanging from his mouth, as he sharpened his teeth with a ferocious laugh. If you looked only at him, you said to yourself: "He has him!" But a glance at the fox reassured you at once. Under his lustrous, velvety coat, catlike, with his body almost touching the ground, skimming along without effort, you felt that he was in truth a wizard, and his fine head with its pointed ears, which he turned toward the hound as he ran, had an ironical expression of security which clearly indicated the gift he had received from the gods.
While an inspector of the Beaux-Arts, who had hurried to the spot, with his uniform all awry, and bald to the middle of his back, explained to Mohammed the apologue of "The Dog and the Fox," as told in the catalogue, with this moral: "Suppose that they meet," and the note: "The property of the Duc de Mora," the bulky Hemerlingue, puffing and perspiring beside his Highness, had great difficulty in persuading him that that masterly production was the work of the lovely equestrian they had met in the Bois the day before. How could a woman with a woman's weak hands so soften the hard bronze and give it the appearance of flesh? Of all the marvels of Paris that one caused the bey the most profound amazement. So he asked the official if there was nothing else of the same artist's to see.
"Yes, indeed, Monseigneur, another chef-d'oeuvre. If your Highness will come this way I will take you to it."
The bey moved on with his suite. They were all fine specimens of their race, beautifully chiselled features and pure profiles, complexions of a warm pallor of which the snowy whiteness of the haik absorbed even the reflection. Magnificently draped, they contrasted strangely with the busts which were ranged on both sides of the aisle they had taken, and which, perched on their high pedestals, exiled from their familiar surroundings, from the environment in which they would doubtless have recalled some engrossing toil, some deep affection, a busy and courageous life, seemed very forlorn in the empty air about them and presented the distressing aspect of people who had gone astray and were very much ashamed to find themselves there. Aside from two or three female figures, well-rounded shoulders enveloped in petrified lace, hair reproduced in marble with the soft touch that gives the impression of a powdered head-dress, and a few profiles of children with simple lines, in