, disjointed
phrases, formulas which she takes care to remember, approves with a
nod, smiles, raises her shoulders when she hears a stupid remark made,
inclined to murder the first person who should not admire.

Whether it be the good Crenmitz or another, you will always see it at
every opening of the _Salon_, that furtive silhouette, prowling near
wherever a conversation is going on, with an anxious manner and alert
ear; sometimes a simple old fellow, some father, whose glance thanks you
for any kind word said in passing, or assumes a grieved expression by
reason of some epigram, flung at the work of art, that may wound some
heart behind you. A figure not to be forgotten, certainly, if ever
it should occur to any painter with a passion for modernity to fix on
canvas that very typical manifestation of Parisian life, the opening of
an exhibition in that vast conservatory of sculpture, with its paths
of yellow sand, and its immense glass roof beneath which, half-way up,
stand out the galleries of the first floor, lined by heads bent over to
look down, and decorated with improvised flowing draperies.

In a rather cold light, made pallid by those green curtains that
hang all around, in which one would fancy that the light-rays become
rarefied, in order to give to the vision of the people walking about
the room a certain contemplative justice, the slow crowd goes and comes,
pauses, disperses itself over the seats in serried groups, and yet
mixing up different sections of society more thoroughly than any other
assembly, just as the weather, uncertain and changeable at this time of
the year, produces a confusion in the world of clothes, causes to brush
each other as they pass, the black laces, the imperious train of the
great lady come to see how her portrait looks, and the Siberian furs of
the actress just back from Russia and anxious that everybody should know
it.

Here, no boxes, no stalls, no reserved seats, and it is this that gives
to this _premiere_ in full daylight so great a charm of curiosity.
Genuine ladies of fashion are able to form an opinion of those painted
beauties who receive so much commendation in an artificial light;
the little hat, following a new mode of the Marquise de Bois l'Hery,
confronts the more than modest toilette of some artist's wife or
daughter; while the model who posed for that beautiful Andromeda at the
entrance, goes by victoriously, clad in too short a skirt, in wretched
garments that