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, 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 earnest conference. 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 lively oracle 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