Marguerite Girardet, the model, also told me between poses in the studio the other day of just such a “pauvre homme” she once knew. “When he was young,” she said, “he won a second prize at the Conservatoire, and afterward played first violin at the Comique. Now he plays in front of the cafés, like the rest, and sometimes poses for the head of an old man!
A. MICHELENA
“Many grow old so young,” she continued; “I knew a little model once with
a beautiful figure, absolutely comme un bijou—pretty, too, and had she been a sensible girl, as I often told her, she could still have earned her ten francs a day posing; but she wanted to dine all the time with this and that one, and pose too, and in three months all her fine ‘svelte’ lines that made her a valuable model among the sculptors were gone. You see, I have posed all my life in the studios, and I am over thirty now, and you know I work hard, but I have kept my fine lines—because I go to bed early and eat and drink little. Then I have much to do at home; my husband and I for years have had a comfortable home; we take a great deal of pride in it, and it keeps me very busy to keep everything in order, for I pose very early some mornings and then go back and get déjeuner, and then back to pose again.
A SCULPTOR’S STUDIO
“In the summer,” she went on, “we take a little place outside of Paris for a month, down the Seine, where my husband brings his work with him; he is a repairer of fans and objets d’art. You should come in and see us some time; it is quite near where you painted last summer. Ah yes,” she exclaimed, as she drew her pink toes under her, “I love the country! Last year I posed nearly two months for Monsieur Z., the painter—en plein air; my skin was not as white as it is now, I can tell you—I was absolutely like an Indian!
FRÉMIET