Julian had his office below, but was not there with any regularity, generally coming in to loaf or to see new girls. He was a Hercules and quite a romantic figure, about whom there were many stories. They say he was the Masked Man who used to wrestle on the stage and at county fairs. This hulking fellow had been rather a good painter and had become a most successful business man. Born an Italian peasant, he had spent the early years of his life as a goatherd. To me he always looked exactly like a great big orangutan. The three hundred francs a year he received from each one of us seemed a small sum; but the models were paid only a few cents a day, the rental of the studio must have been negligible, and such men as Lefebvre, Boulanger, Bougereau, Tony Fleury, and after him Tony Robert Fleury, gave their instruction gratuitously. So it was not such a bad business deal after all. One of the older students was the _massier_, or boss. He chose the model for the week or had one voted upon from the crowd of poor devils who lined the stairway every Monday morning in hopes of a job. This day we grabbed our places; first come, first served. If anyone came into the room, other than Julian or an _ancien_ (old student), there were hurled at him paint tubes, stools, cigar butts, oaths, and comments upon his appearance and clothing. This was a tradition of the school and had to be lived up to. Some of the pupils were old men with gray hair who had been there fifteen or twenty years, still working away, I suppose, like some men who stay in prison after their terms are up, having got used to the place. One day a tall Englishman—I think he called himself Vernon—turned up. He was about fifty-five years old, hollow cheeked, with sad eyes looking out from under great brows. He came every day and worked hard, but his painting was not very good. He always made a pretty model’s legs look like twisted rope. One morning he called me over to criticize his drawing, and I asked him why he was doing this. He told me he was an art lover, owned a great many pictures, and thought he would get a far greater appreciation of them by doing the actual work. He stayed about two months and some time after we learned that he was Lord Dufferin, who had just come from the post of Governor-General of Canada and was on his way to St. Petersburg. Imagine the shame of a certain pupil from England who had constantly boasted in a truly British manner (and, indeed, in “Mr. Vernon’s” very presence) of his close friendship with Lord Dufferin!