THE MUSÉE CLUNY
Pochard has seen it; so has the little old woman who once danced at the opera; so have old Bibi La Purée, and Alphonse, the gray-haired garçon, and Mère Gaillard, the flower-woman. They have seen the gay boulevards and the cafés and generations
of grisettes, from the true grisette of years gone by, in her dainty white cap and simple dress turned low at the throat, to the tailor-made grisette of to-day.
Yet the eyes of the little old woman still dance; they have not grown tired of this ever-changing kaleidoscope of human nature, this paradise of the free, where many would rather struggle on half starved than live a life of luxury elsewhere.
And the students are equally quixotic. I knew one once who lived in an air-castle of his own building—a tall, serious fellow, a sculptor, who always went tramping about in a robe resembling a monk’s cowl, with his bare feet incased in coarse sandals; only his art redeemed these eccentricities, for he produced in steel and ivory the most exquisite statuettes. One at the Salon was the sensation of the day—a knight in full armor, scarcely half a foot in height, holding in his arms a nymph in flesh-tinted ivory, whose gentle face, upturned, gazed sweetly into the stern features behind the uplifted vizor; and all so exquisitely carved, so alive, so human, that one could almost feel the tender heart of this fair lady beating against the cold steel breastplate.
Another “bon garçon”—a painter whose enthusiasm for his art knew no bounds—craved to produce a masterpiece. This dreamer could be seen daily ferreting around the Quarter for a studio always bigger than the one he had. At last he found one that exactly fitted the requirements of his vivid imagination—a studio with a ceiling thirty feet high, with windows like the scenic ones next to the stage entrances of the theaters. Here at last he could give full play to his brush—no subject seemed too big for him to tackle; he would move in a canvas as big as a back flat to a third act, and commence on a “Fall of Babylon” or a “Carnage of Rome” with a nerve that was sublime! The choking dust of the arena—the insatiable fury of the tigers—the cowering of hundreds of unfortunate captives—and the cruel multitude above, seated in the vast circle of the hippodrome—all these did not daunt his zeal.
Once he persuaded a venerable old abbé to pose for his portrait. The old gentleman came patiently to his studio and posed for ten days, at the end of which time the abbé gazed at the result and said things which I dare not repeat—for our enthusiast had so far only painted his clothes; the face was still in its primary drawing.
“The face I shall do in time,” the enthusiast assured the reverend man excitedly; “it is the effect of the rich color of your robe I wished to get. And may I ask your holiness to be patient a day longer while I put in your boots?”
“No, sir!” thundered the irate abbé. “Does monsieur think I am not a very busy man?”