arance.

[Illustration: p155-166]

"Good heavens, dear child! what is the matter?"

I related to mama what I had seen, where this dreadful woman was, and
in what costume. And I cried, and cried. My mother, much moved, tried to
console me, explained to me that it must have been a model.

"What! but it is abominable; no one ever told me about that before I was
married!"

Hereupon Etienne arrived, greatly distressed, and tried in his turn to
make me understand that a model is not a woman like other women, and
that besides sculptors cannot get on without them; but these reasons
had no effect upon me, and I stoutly declared I would have nothing to
do with a husband who spent his days _tete-a-tete_ with young ladies in
such a costume.

"Come, my dear Etienne," said poor mama, trying hard to arrange
everything peaceably, "could you not out of respect for your wife's
feelings, replace this creature by a dummy, a lay figure?"

My husband bit his moustaches furiously.

"Quite impossible, dear mother."

"Still, my dear, it seems to me--a bright idea! milliners have
pasteboard heads on which they trim bonnets. Well, what can be done for
a head, could it not be done for----?" It seems this is not possible.

At least, this was what Etienne tried to demonstrate at great length,
with all sorts of details and technical words. He really looked very
unhappy. I watched him out of the corner of my eye while I dried my
tears, and I saw that my grief affected him deeply. At last, after
an endless discussion, it was agreed that since the model was
indispensable, I should be there whenever she came. There chanced to
be on one side of the studio a very convenient little lumber-room, from
which I could see without being seen. I ought to be ashamed, you will
say, of being jealous of such kind of creatures, and of showing my
jealousy. But, my pet, you must have gone through these emotions before
you can offer an opinion about them.

Next day, the model was to be there. I therefore summoned up my courage,
and installed myself in my hiding-place, with the express condition that
at the least tap at the partition my husband should come to me at once.
Scarcely had I shut myself in, when the dreadful model I had seen
the other day arrived, dressed Heaven knows how, and so wretched in
appearance, that I asked myself how I could have been jealous of a woman
who could walk abroad without a scrap of white cuff at her wrists,
and in an old shawl