Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/262

guised under the mantle of Cæsar, was recognized and rejected with all the honors due him. Next year, Marcel threw a coat of white over the foreground, to imitate snow, planted a fir-tree in one corner, and dressing an Egyptian like a grenadier of the Imperial Guard, christened his picture “The Passage of the Beresina.”

But the jury had wiped its glasses that day, and were not to be duped by this new stratagem. It recognized the pertinacious picture by a thundering big pie-bald horse that was prancing on top of a wave of the Red Sea. The skin of this horse served Marcel for all his experiments in coloring; he used to call it, familiarly, his “synoptic table of fine tones,” because it reproduced the most varied combinations of color, with the different plays of light and shade. Once again, however, the jury could not find black balls enough to refuse The Passage of the Beresina.”

“Very well,” said Marcel, “I thought so! Next year, I shall send it under the title of ‘The Passage of the Panoramas.’”

sang Schaunard to a new air of his own composition; a terrible air, like a gamut of thunder-claps, the accompaniment whereof was a terror to all pianos within hearing.

“How can they refuse it, without all the vermilion of my Red Sea mounting to their cheeks, and covering them with the blush of shame?” ejaculated the artist, as he gazed on his picture. “When I think that there is five hundred francs’ worth of color there, and at least a million of genius, without counting my lovely youth, now as bald as my old hat! But they shan’t get the better of me! Till my dying day, I will send them my picture. It shall be engraved on their memories.”

“The surest way of ever having it engraved,” said Col-