"I hope his bed-clothes will always come up at the foot!" growled Austina, whose canvas looked like a map of a humming-bird's flight done in charcoal.
"Let's all subscribe and buy The Angel a bouquet for Christmas," gushed enthusiastically the British blonde Godsalina, upon whom one of the pas mals had fallen, and who had the true faith of her nation in the efficacy of "tips" for sovereign or beggar.
Then the model stretched his legs, returned to his normal and carnal expression of countenance, and disappeared to return no more till the morrow, leaving the platform vacant awaiting the nude female model who was engaged for the afternoon. The atelier was abandoned to Sophie, the femme de ménage, who stirred the fires, gathered stray brushes from the floor, changed the background drapery for the afternoon model, rearranged the easels into afternoon position, and brought out glasses and plates for the ladies, who lunched in the anteroom. And then a looker-on in a Parisian atelier des dames would readily have understood the words, "He's gone, girls!" even were that looker-on deafer than the deafest old woman who ever mistook a thunder-clap for one of her lord's champion snores. In the anteroom conversation ran during lunch in various channels. Some of the ladies discussed the ever-absorbing topic of the price of living, and boasted of marvellous exploits in the way of economy. Other and fewer students, to whom money was as the dust upon the bust of Pallas over the studio-door, talked of the last "first representations" at the Français, of Croisette's rapidly amplifying figure, of Sarah Bernhardt's unnecessary immodesty in dressing Racine's Andromaque, of the Grant reception at Healy's, of Lefevre's slipperiness of texture, of the lack of the true sentiment of piety in Bouguereau's religious pictures, of the harum-scarum amusements among the Americans at Bonnât's atelier, and the latest gossip of the private studios.
"Want to know where you can buy just h-e-a-venly cheese for a franc a pound?" mumbles young Madame New Jersey with her mouth full of Gruyère.