A wail swept up from French, American, English, Swedish, Spanish, Norwegian, Russian and West Indian bosoms.
"We'll embrace the religion and the gods of the old Greek hommes then, or throw ourselves into the profoundest gulfs of infidelity, while we remain in Paris," ejaculated Bostonia in a vigorous stage-aside.
"Have you a wife?" asked Madame Deschamps, a fashionable portrait-painter.
"Oui, madame. Ma femme is Lucreza, whom you know. She has made the nymphs and goddesses for a thousand pictures, but now she is so much fat that the messieurs will have her only for the head, although she still poses for the ensemble in the ateliers des dames."
Here the best Christ in Paris grinned satanically as a polyglot howl went up from among the students.
"That's his tit for the tat of the 'Cheshire cat,'" laughed Madame Lafarge, a French-American Corinne with an all-French moustache.
"We won't have Lucreza again if she is too fat to pose for the nude except in a ladies' studio," snapped the elder Swede.
"Oh, I have forgotten to say zat she has upset ze pail since eight days," chuckled the man.
"Upset the pail?" And twenty pairs of eyes looked full of interrogation-points.
"Giggle! giggle! giggle!" came sputteringly from behind Concordia's easel as she gasped, "Don't you understand? He has improved his English among the Americans in Gérôme's studio, and he means she kicked the bucket eight days ago."