“I live with mama, and mama never gives me any money to spend on myself. This is Sunday and a holiday, so I shall go with Henriette and her brother to Vincennes. It is delicious there under the trees.”
OLD MAN MODEL
It would have been quite impossible for me to have gone with them—I was not even invited; but this very serious and good little Parisienne, who posed for the figure with quite the same unconsciousness as she would have handed you your change over the counter of some stuffy little shop, went to Vincennes with Henriette and her brother, where they had a beautiful day—scrambling up the paths and listening to the band—all at the enormous expense of the artist; and this was how this good little Parisienne managed to save five francs in a single day!
There are old-men models who knock at your studio too, and who are celebrated for their tangled gray locks, which they immediately uncover as you open your door. These unkempt-looking Father Times and Methuselahs prowl about the staircases of the different ateliers daily. So do little children—mostly Italians and all filthily dirty; swarthy, black-eyed, gypsy-looking girls and boys of from twelve to fifteen years of age, and Italian mothers holding small children—itinerant madonnas. These are the poorer class of models—the riff-raff of the Quarter—who get anywhere from a few sous to a few francs for a séance.
And there are four-footed models, too, for I know a kindly old horse who has served in many a studio and who has carried a score of the famous generals of the world and Jeanne d’Arcs to battle—in many a modern public square.
Chacun son métier!
[ CHAPTER VIII]
