"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.
"Over in the Latin Quarter, close by the Rue Jacob Brasserie, where so many American students hold daily symposia."
"I'll go and buy a quarter of a pound this very evening," said Miss Providence energetically.
"I too! I too! et moi aussi!" cried others of the many who lived _à la Bohémienne_ in lofty mansards of _maisons meublées_, dining at cheap restaurants, breakfasting by aid of spirit-lamps from corners of dressing-tables and lunching on _charcuterie_ in the anteroom of the Krug studio, searching high and low for "cheapness" as for a pearl of great price.
"And pay twelve sous for your omnibus fare!" cried the practical little Illinois maiden, Dixonia.
"Je suis à vous, mesdames," said the favorite model, Alphonse, at the door.
"Alas, sweet Adonis! we have engaged our people for the next three weeks."
"And I am desolé, mesdames, that you have not want of me;" and the graceful Alphonse melted away like a snow-wreath in a south wind.
At one o'clock came the sallow Frenchwoman, with the face of a Gorgon and the figure of a Juno, who posed for the _ensemble_. She stood against the dark crimson background, outlined pure and white like a marvel of Phidian sculpture upon which the Spirit of Life had slightly breathed. So still, so white, so coldly, purely statuesque she seemed, that one sometimes entirely forgot that she was else than the fair statue born from the block of marble at the command of a divine genius, till the chiselled arms were seen to quiver and the sculptured knees to almost bend. Then a reproachful cry ran through the atelier: "Shame! shame! We have forgotten that she was a woman and not a statue, and have kept her posing two hours without a repose."
"How much do you earn by this wearisome business?" asked Paletta pityingly as the tired model, wrapped in a threadbare waterproof, cowered over the stove during "the repose."
"If I pose for a half day of each week like this in an atelier des dames, I earn twenty-five francs a week, but what I earn by posing for artists in private studios depends much upon chance. Sometimes I am needed only for a leg or arm or bust, or even hand: then I earn less of course, for it makes broken hours. I would demand much more from the ateliers des dames had I a handsome face, but always my ensemble is painted with the head of a prettier model where there is any purpose of using me in a picture."