take girls who wished to become artists; for to them he would have
been obliged to give certain instructions without which no talent

could advance in the profession. Little by little his prudence and the
ability with which he initiated his pupils into his art, the certainty

each mother felt that her daughter was in company with none but well-
bred young girls, and the fact of the artist's marriage, gave him an

excellent reputation as a teacher in society. When a young girl wished
to learn to draw, and her mother asked advice of her friends, the

answer was, invariably: "Send her to Servin's."
Servin became, therefore, for feminine art, a specialty; like Herbault

for bonnets, Leroy for gowns, and Chevet for eatables. It was
recognized that a young woman who had taken lessons from Servin was

capable of judging the paintings of the Musee conclusively, of making
a strikingportrait, copying an ancient master, or painting a genre

picture. The artist thus sufficed for the educational needs of the
aristocracy. But in spite of these relations with the best families in

Paris, he was independent and patriotic, and he maintained among them
that easy, brilliant, half-ironical tone, and that freedom of judgment

which characterize" target="_blank" title="v.描绘；具有...特征">characterize painters.
He had carried his scrupulous precaution into the arrangements of the

locality where his pupils studied. The entrance to the attic above his
apartments was walled up. To reach this retreat, as sacred as a harem,

it was necessary to go up a small spiralstairway">staircase made within his own
rooms. The studio, occupying nearly the whole attic floor under the

roof, presented to the eye those vast proportions which surprise
inquirers when, after attaining sixty feet above the ground-floor,

they expect to find an artist squeezed into a gutter.
This gallery, so to speak, was profusely lighted from above, through

enormous panes of glass furnished with those green linen shades by
means of which all artists arrange the light. A quantity of

caricatures, heads drawn at a stroke, either in color or with the
point of a knife, on walls painted in a dark gray, proved that,

barring a difference in expression, the most distinguished young girls
have as much fun and folly in their minds as men. A small stove with a

large pipe, which described a fearfulzigzag before it reached the
upper regions of the roof, was the necessary and infallibleornament

of the room. A shelf ran round the walls, on which were models in
plaster, heterogeneously placed, most of them covered with gray dust.

Here and there, above this shelf, a head of Niobe, hanging to a nail,
presented her pose of woe; a Venus smiled; a hand thrust itself

forward like that of a pauper asking alms; a few "ecorches," yellowed
by smoke, looked like limbs snatched over-night from a graveyard;

besides these objects, pictures, drawings, lay figures, frames without
paintings, and paintings without frames gave to this irregular

apartment that studio physiognomy which is distinguished for its
singular jumble of ornament and bareness, poverty and riches, care and

neglect. The vast receptacle of an "atelier," where all seems small,
even man, has something of the air of an Opera "coulisse"; here lie

ancient garments, gilded armor, fragments of stuffs, machinery. And
yet there is something mysteriously grand, like thought, in it; genius

and death are there; Diana and Apollo beside a skull or skeleton,
beauty and destruction, poesy and reality, colors glowing in the

shadows, often a whole drama, motionless and silent. Strange symbol of
an artist's head!

At the moment when this history begins, a brilliant July sun was
illuminating the studio, and two rays striking athwart it lengthwise,

traced diaphanous gold lines in which the dust was shimmering. A dozen
easels raised their sharp points like masts in a port. Several young

girls were animating the scene by the variety of their expressions,
their attitudes, and the differences in their toilets. The strong

shadows cast by the green serge curtains, arranged according to the
needs of each easel, produced a multitude of contrasts, and the

piquant effects of light and shade. This group was the prettiest of
all the pictures in the studio.

A fair young girl, very simply dressed, sat at some distance from her
companions, workingbravely and seeming to be in dread of some mishap.

No one looked at her, or spoke to her; she was much the prettiest, the
most modest, and, apparently, the least rich among them. Two principal

groups, distinctly separated from each other, showed the presence of
two sets or cliques, two minds even here, in this studio, where one

might suppose that rank and fortune would be forgotten.
But, however that might be, these young girls, sitting or standing, in

the midst of their color-boxes, playing with their brushes or
preparing them, handling their dazzling palettes, painting, laughing,

talking, singing, absolutely" target="_blank" title="ad.绝对地；确实">absolutely natural, and exhibiting their real
selves, composed a spectacle unknown to man. One of them, proud,

haughty, capricious, with black hair and beautiful hands, was casting
the flame of her glance here and there at random; another, light-

hearted and gay, a smile upon her lips, with chestnut hair and
delicate white hands, was a typical French virgin, thoughtless, and

without hidden thoughts, living her natural real life; a third was
dreamy, melancholy, pale, bending her head like a drooping flower; her

neighbor, on the contrary, tall, indolent, with Asiatic habits, long
eyes, moist and black, said but little, and reflected, glancing

covertly at the head of Antinous.
Among them, like the "jocoso" of a Spanish play, full of wit and

epigrammatic sallies, another girl was watching the rest with a
comprehensive glance, making them laugh, and tossing up her head, too

lively and arch not to be pretty. She appeared to rule the first group
of girls, who were the daughters of bankers, notaries, and merchants,

--all rich, but aware of the imperceptible though cutting slights
which another group belonging to the aristocracy put upon them. The

latter were led by the daughter of one of the King's ushers, a little
creature, as silly as she was vain, proud of being the daughter of a

man with "an office at court." She was a girl who always pretended to
understand the remarks of the master at the first word, and seemed to

do her work as a favor to him. She used an eyeglass, came very much
dressed, and always late, and entreated her companions to speak low.

In this second group were several girls with exquisite figures and
distinguished features, but there was little in their glance or

expression that was simple and candid. Though their attitudes were
elegant and their movements graceful, their faces lacked frankness; it

was easy to see that they belonged to a world where polite manners
form the character from early youth, and the abuse of social pleasures

destroys sentiment and develops egotism.
But when the whole class was here assembled, childlike heads were seen

among this bevy of young girls, ravishingly pure and virgin, faces
with lips half-opened, through which shone spotless teeth, and on

which a virgin smile was flickering. The studio then resembled not a
studio, but a group of angels seated on a cloud in ether.

By mid-day, on this occasion, Servin had not appeared. For some days
past he had spent most of his time in a studio which he kept

elsewhere, where he was giving the last touches to a picture for the
Exposition. All of a sudden Mademoiselle Amelie Thirion, the leader of

the aristocrats, began to speak in a low voice, and very earnestly" target="_blank" title="ad.认真地；急切地">earnestly, to
her neighbor. A great silence fell on the group of patricians, and the

commercial party, surprised, were equally silent, trying to discover
the subject of this earnestconference. The secret of the young ULTRAS

was soon revealed.
Amelie rose, took an easel which stood near hers, carried it to a

distance from the noble group, and placed it close to a board
partition which separated the studio from the extreme end of the

attic, where all broken casts, defaced canvases and the winter supply
of wood were kept. Amelie's action caused a murmur of surprise, which

did not prevent her from accomplishing the change by rolling hastily
to the side of the easel the stool, the box of colors, and even the

picture by Prudhon, which the absent pupil was copying. After this
coup d'etat the Right began to work in silence, but the Left

discoursed at length.
"What will Mademoiselle Piombo say to that?" asked a young girl of

Mademoiselle Matilde Roguin, the livelyoracle of the banking group.
"She's not a girl to say anything," was the reply; "but fifty years

hence she'll remember the insult as if it were done to her the night
before, and revenge it cruelly. She is a person that I, for one, don't

want to be at war with."
"The slight these young ladies mean to put upon her is all the more

unkind," said another young girl, "because yesterday, Mademoiselle
Ginevra was very sad. Her father, they say, has just resigned. They

ought not to add to her trouble, for she was very considerate of them
during the Hundred Days. Never did she say a word to wound them. On

the contrary, she avoided politics. But I think our ULTRAS are acting
more from jealousy than from party spite."

"I have a great mind to go and get Mademoiselle Piombo's easel and
place it next to mine," said Matilde Roguin. She rose, but second