“The cavalcade!” he grunted.
There was a fluttering of white sheets of paper. Settling himself in his seat, he tapped for attention, swung his baton, and with resulting crash the orchestra burst into the thundering music of a triumphal march.
“Suzanne!”
The shout went up from the hoarse throats of a thousand fantastically-robed students, sounding vibrant in the golden haze and echoing in the blaze of light to the resounding rafters. They drew their swords, Greek and Roman, and they of the courts of the Louis, Crusader and Saracen, and Goth and barbarian; the flashing steel greeted her:
“Suzanne!”
Upon a golden shield, supported high above all heads by four of the most famous models of Paris, she came, her white body statuesque and calm; gleaming rosy-tinted, she stood poised in all her slender beauty—and as the shout went up she smiled.
“Suzanne!”
She knew it well. She was in all the beauty of youth—and her perfect body not only held the glory of the ancient art of the sculpture of Greece, but it had the exquisite mystery of life in its pleasant surface which the art of man cannot utter.
So Suzanne led the procession round the huge hall and was borne towards the tribune where the judges sat.
After the queen of the models came the procession of the rival studios. From amidst the crested helms and glittering steel of Greek and Roman soldiery arose the great figure of the war-goddess Bellona, the fury standing a-tiptoe, sword and shield upraised, head thrust forward snake-like, her scarlet mouth shrieking at topmost pitch the fierce yell to war, her black brows gathered in black hate; before her feet an angry snake, with head upraised, darted a black sullen tongue. As the great travesty of Gérôme’s awful figure of the lust of blood moved along, there shone from out the hollows of her staring eyes a pale green light, cruel and livid. On her gilt chariot she passed, escorted by her bodyguard of Greek and Roman soldiery, and gave place to the classic float on which sat the nude young model, Marcelle, posed as Gérôme’s exquisite statue of Tanagra. Marcelle’s slight and slender girlish figure at this time made her a serious rival to Suzanne, and was markedly affecting the whole ideal of womanly beauty and proportion throughout the studios of France. As she sat, in all the simplicity of pose of a Tanagra figure, the light making her delicate colour glow, the cry of hoarse admiration for Bellona changed to a shout for