Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, page 19 by Various Authors
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choes 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 ça;" and the Italian made sundry rotary motions of the arm, as if grinding an invisible hand-organ.
[Illustration: THE ELDER SWEDE AND ARAMINTA SHODDY.]
"Did you earn more money with the music or as model?" asked Mademoiselle Émilie, the girl-artist from Madrid, with black hair dyed golden, who always swore by Murillo's Virgins, and who did her work dreamily, as if the motions of her hands were timed to the languorous rhythm of some far-off, daintily-touched guitar beneath vine-wreathed balcony and starlit sky.
"In Londres I gained more money as musician. In Angleterre zere is not mooch love of ze Christ, ze St. John and ze Judas. It is not a Catholic country, comme la France, and ze Anglaises aime bettaire ze gods of ze old Greek hommes. In la France zey aime ze true religion, and I gain mooch money, and am in ze Salon many times evairy year, because I am ze best Christ in Paris."
A wail swept up from French, American, English, Swedish, Spanish, Norwegian, Russian and West Indian bosoms.
"We'll embrace the religion and the gods of the old Greek hommes then, or throw ourselves into the profoundest gulfs of infidelity, while we remain in Paris," ejaculated Bostonia in a vigorous stage-aside.
"Have you a wife?" asked Madame Deschamps, a fashionable portrait-painter.
"Oui, madame. Ma femme is Lucreza, whom you know. She has made the nymphs and goddesses for a thousand pictures, but now she is so much fat that the messieurs will have her only for the head, although she still poses for the ensemble in the ateliers des dames."
Here the best Christ in Paris grinned satanically as a polyglot howl went up from among the students.
"That's his tit for the ta