"EN COSTUME DE VILLE " 



" Montr ez plusieurs poses, sHl vous plait ! " 

 The army of savages clustered round the stove run 

 with hideous barefooted nimbleness to the model 

 stand, and leap or scramble on to its dirty platform. 

 Having gained that eminence they abandon them- 

 selves to nightmare realisations of the emotions. A 

 Jewish youth, with eyes like a lizard, becomes an 

 embodiment of Faith and Prayer. A little Italian, 

 with a body of Dachshund -like proportions, swash- 

 bucklers it, a salvage man rampant, his stumpy legs 

 wide apart, and a rusty file in his hairy fist. He is 

 as hairy all over as a monkey, and his eyes roll in 

 his motionless head as he tries to see how many hands 

 go up in his favour. 



" Trois ! Quaf ! Cinq ! Pas assez, descendez ! " 

 Two or three patriarchs, whose ancient persons are 

 desolately in need of the watch-chains and double- 

 breasted waistcoats proper to their age, rival one 

 another in exemplifying Patience, Resignation, and 

 other qualities supposed to befit the aged. There is 

 a horribly plaintive anxiety in their eyes as they 

 count the uplifted hands of the students, hands that 

 hold a week of plenty, or of leanness in their giimy 

 grasp. Their ribs utter eloquent appeals; they are 

 so many bones of contention over which ^vi*angle the 

 artistic and the merely humane instincts; generally, 

 it is to be feared, to the discomfiture of the latter. 

 Scraggy Italian boys, suggestive in hue alike of the 

 soot-bag and the lemon; haggard Frenchmen, with 



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