Behold Paletta--twenty-three years of age, with a winy color upon her lips, the faintest perceptible shadow of fading upon the roses of her cheeks, a little anxious wrinkle between her earnest gray eyes, a slight nasal twang in her New England voice, and a fresh flounce upon her old black alpaca dress--the first morning of her experience in an _atelier des dames_ in Paris! She had come down the hill from her dark little room on Montmartre, fancying that the gray December day was crystalline, that the dingy Rue Germain Pillon--with its dirty gamins of both sexes in cropped hair and blouses or white caps and black gowns, its frowsy women slouching in doorways, its succession of odorous _cuisines bourgeoises_, vile-smelling _lavoirs_, cheap fruit-shops and plebeian _cremeries_, its slimy cobblestones, its gutters running _not_ with laughing waters, and sending up scents _not_ of spicy isles ensphered by sun-illumined seas--was a rainbow arch over which she passed with airy tread toward the Krug studio. For had she not at last finished for ever the detestable photograph-coloring which had been a daily crucifixion of all her artistic feelings for years? Had she not at last reached the Enchanted Land for which she had labored and pined for half her life? Had she not clothes enough to last her with patient mendings and persistent remakings for two years? Had she not a thousand dollars at the Credit Lyonnais? And did not that stately entrance before her lead into a spacious courtyard, and that courtyard open upon the famous _Atelier des Dames_, where, at the feet of celebrated masters of form and color, she was to learn some of the mysteries of the art to which she had vowed her life? [Illustration: "JE VIEN ME PROPOSER COMME MODELE, MESDAMES."] Within the court, before the handsome building whose story after story of immense north windows showed it to be a collection of artists' studios, she found an interesting _tableau vivant_. A group of chattering models came laughing across the sunny court. In one corner loomed a huge square object surmounted by the conical crown of a Tyrolean hat. Nothing else was visible except a pair of gaitered feet mixed among the legs of a sketching-easel, making the whole seem some queer phenomenal creature which science had not yet classified or named. Before this phenomenon stood--or rather fidgeted--a beautiful Arabian horse with flashing eyes, and limbs clean cut as if by Doric chisel in marble of Pentelicus. This superb animal was held by two grooms, one at his head, the other holding first one foot, then another, as the order to pose the unwilling model fractionally in the attitude of a prancing, curveting Bucephalus came from the square, five-legged, unnamed creature in the corner. "Ah!" thought Paletta as she followed her shadow over the sunny pavement, "the famous animal-painter Jacques is behind that great square canvas, I know, for I saw him there yesterday painting a struggling sheep."