For to-night was the great annual ball of the artists, when all artistic Paris crawls from its mysterious depths to revel in a splendid carnival possible only to the arts. Every spring, after the pictures have been sent to the Salon, and before the students have scattered for the summer vacation, the artists of Paris and the members of all the ateliers of the four arts--painting, sculpture, architecture, and engraving--combine their forces in producing a spectacle of regal splendor, seen nowhere else in the world; and long are the weeks and hard the work and vast the ingenuity devoted to preparations,--the designing of costumes and the building of gorgeous floats. During the last three weeks the _élèves_ of the _Atelier Gérôme_ abandoned their studies, forgot all about the concours and the Prix de Rome, and devoted all their energies to the construction of a colossal figure of Gérôme's great war goddess, "Bel-lona." It was a huge task, but the students worked it out with a will. Yards of sackcloth, rags, old coats, paint rags, besides pine timbers, broken easels and stools, endless wire and rope, went into the making of the goddess's frame, and this was covered with plaster of Paris dexterously moulded into shape. Then it was properly tinted and painted and mounted on a chariot of gold. A Grecian frieze of galloping horses, mounted, the clever work of Siffert, was emblazoned on the sides of the chariot. And what a wreck the atelier was after all was finished! _Sacré nom d'un chien!_ How the gardiens must have sworn when cleaning-day came round! The ateliers in the Ecole are all rivals, and each had been secretly preparing its coup with which to capture the grand prix at the bal. The great day came at last. The students of our atelier were perfectly satisfied with their handiwork, and the massier made all happy by ordering a retreat to the Café des Deux Magots, where success to the goddess was drunk in steaming "grog Américain." Then Bellona began her perilous journey across Paris to Montmartre and the Moulin Rouge. [Illustration: 0087] This was not an easy task, as she was fifteen feet high; signs and lamp- posts suffered, and sleepy cab-horses danced as their terrified gaze beheld the giant goddess with her uplifted sword. Crowds watched the progress of Bellona on the Avenue de l'Opéra, drawn by half a hundred students yelling the national hymn. The pull up the steep slope of Montmartre was heavy, but in less than two hours from the start at the Ecole the goddess was safely housed in the depths of the Moulin Rouge, there to await her triumphs of the night.