The large room was closely packed with easels--so closely, indeed, that an inadvertent motion of hand or foot often sent a wave of excitement through the whole atelier. Heads of every color, from youthful flaxen to venerable gray, were bent over their labors. Hecubas and Helens worked side by side; maulsticks everywhere gave the scene the appearance of a winter-denuded thicket; plaster hands, feet and torsos hung upon the walls; bull-headed Nero swelled upon a shelf beside the mutilated Venus which is a revelation of the glory that merely human beauty can attain without a gleam borrowed from the divine; fat Vitellius seemed to snore open-eyed beside lean and wakeful Julius Caesar; a mask of Medusa leaned lovingly upon the shoulder of Dante; Apollo Belvedere smiled upon an _ecorche_--in atelier parlance "skun man;" finished and unfinished studies of heads, bodies and detached sections of bodies hung from nails in every possible and impossible place. Upon a slightly elevated platform sat the model in his usual street-costume, with oily hair, parted in the middle, falling in long waves upon his shoulders. A spiky circle rested upon his brow, and upon his face was such a stupendous yet futile effort after an expression of divine sweetness and resignation as caused maulsticks to separate themselves every now and then from the denuded thicket and to wabble vaguely about his mouth or play wildly in his hair, accompanied by the commands, "Posez la bouche!" "Posez les yeux!" or, in good American accents, accompanied with a sniff of wrath, "Call _him_ a good Christ? Umph! He'd pose better as a first-class Cheshire cat." [Illustration: "THE BEST CHRIST IN PARIS."] The model's divine smile broadened suddenly into a very human grin. "Do you understand English, monsieur?" demanded Miss New Haven suspiciously, remembering the freedom with which the personal merits and defects of the French and Italian models were usually discussed in their presence in the Anglo-Saxon tongue. "A leetle, mademoiselle: I have lived in Londres during two years." "As artists' model?" "Oui, mademoiselle. I have made the Jesuses, the St. Johns and the Judases for the great English artists teel I have ennuied myself enormement." "Why?" "Because ze artists Anglaise are ze masters vairy difficile, not comme les artists Francais. Zey demand zat ze model pose during two hours sans repose, and zey nevvair give of to drink to ze model." "Did you return to Paris when you ennuied yourself so enormement?" asked a yellow-haired English girl who had painted countless vaporous and ravishing Eurydices and filmy Echoes from broad-waisted, pug-nosed Cockney models, and who always declared that she would recognize a "professional" even among the shining hosts of heaven. "Non, mademoiselle. I rested at Londres to make la musique." "The music?" "Comme ca;" and the Italian made sundry rotary motions of the arm, as if grinding an invisible hand-organ.