The day broke hot and stifling. The first sunbeams which chased the fog from bridge and street also drove the mists from the cool thickets of the Luxembourg Garden, and revealed groups of dragoons picketed in the shrubbery.
“Dragoons in the Luxembourg!” cried the gamins to each other. “What for?”
But even the gamins did not know—yet.
At the great Ateliers of Messieurs Bouguereau and Lefebvre the first day of the week is the busiest—and so, this being Monday, the studios were crowded.
The heat was suffocating. The walls, smeared with the refuse of a hundred palettes, fairly sizzled as they gave off a sickly odor of paint and turpentine. Only two poses had been completed, but the tired models stood or sat, glistening with perspiration. The men drew and painted, many of them stripped to the waist. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke and the respiration of some two hundred students of half as many nationalities.
“Dieu! quel chaleur!” gasped a fat little Frenchman, mopping his clipped head and breathing hard.
“Clifford,” he inquired in English, “ees eet zat you haf a so great—a—heat chez vous?”
Clifford glanced up from his easel. “Heat in New York? My dear Deschamps, this is nothing.”
The other eyed him suspiciously.
“You know New York is the capital of Galveston?” said Clifford, slapping on a brush full of color and leaning back to look at it.