All the women who compete for these prizes will be assembled on the grand staircase before the orchestra. The nude, as always, is PROHIBITED!?!
The question of music at the head of the procession is of the greatest importance, and those comrades who are musical will please give their names to the delegates of the ateliers. Your good-will in this line is asked for—any great worthless capacity in this line will do, as they always play the same tune, “Les Pompiers!”
The Committee—1899.
For days before the “Quat’z’ Arts” ball, all is excitement among the students, who do as little work as possible and rest themselves for the great event. The favorite wit of the different ateliers is given the task of painting the banner of the atelier, which is carried at the head of the several cortéges. One of these, in Bouguereau’s atelier, depicted their master caricatured as a cupid.
The boys once constructed an elephant with oriental trappings—an elephant that could wag his ears and lift his trunk and snort—and after the two fellows who formed respectfully the front and hind legs of this knowing beast had practised sufficiently to proceed with him safely, at the head of a cortége of slave girls, nautch dancers, and manacled captives, the big beast created a success in the procession at the “Quat’z’ Arts” ball.
After the ball, in the gray morning light, they marched it back to the atelier, where it remained for some weeks, finally becoming such a nuisance, kicking around the atelier and getting in everybody’s way, that the boys agreed to give it to the first junk-man that came around. But as no junk-man came, and as no one could be found to care for its now sadly battered hulk, its good riddance became a problem. What to do with the elephant! that was the question.
At last the two, who had sweltered in its dusty frame that eventful night of the “Quat’z’ Arts,” hit upon an idea. They marched it one day up the Boulevard St. Germain to the Café des deux Magots, followed by a crowd of people, who, when it reached the café, assembled around it, every one asking what it was for—or rather what it was?—for the beast had by now lost much of the resemblance of its former self. When half the street became blocked with the crowd, the two wise gentlemen crawled out of its fore and aft, and quickly mingled, unnoticed, with the bystanders. Then they disappeared in the crowd, leaving the elephant standing in the middle of the street. Those who had been expecting something to happen—a circus or the rest of the parade to come along—stood around for a while, and then the police, realizing that they had an elephant on their hands, carted the thing away, swearing meanwhile at the atelier and every one connected with it.
The cafés near the Odéon, just before the beginning of the ball, are filled with students in costume; gladiators hobnob at the tables with savages in scanty attire—Roman soldiers and students, in the garb of the ancients, strut about or chat in groups, while the uninvited grisettes and models, who have not received invitations from the committee, implore them for tickets.