hat, and adopted
that of the English clergy. He was a charming man, and by no means
straight-laced, but he drew the line at accompanying Arthur in his
nightly perambulations. One evening he, Arthur Bertrand, and Alexandre
Dumas were strolling along the Boulevards when the latter tried to make
the abbe enter the Varietes. The abbe held firm, or rather took to his
heels.

In those days there were still a great many veterans of the _grande
armee_ about, and a great deal of Horace Vernet's money went in
entertaining them at the various cafes and restaurants--especially when
he was preparing sketches for a new picture. The ordinary model, clever
and eminently useful as he was at that period, was willingly discarded
for the old and bronzed warrior of the Empire, some of whom were even
then returning from Africa. "They may just as well earn the money I pay
the others," he said; consequently it was not an unusual thing to see a
general, a couple of colonels, half a dozen captains, and as many
sergeants and privates, all of whom had served under Napoleon, in
Vernet's studio at the same time. Of course, the officers were only too
pleased to give their services gratuitously, but Vernet had a curious
way of making up his daily budget. Twenty models at four francs--for
models earned no more then--eighty francs. Fifteen of them refused their
pay. The eighty francs to be divided between five. And the five veterans
enjoyed a magnificent income for weeks and weeks at a time.

Truth compels me to state, however, that during those weeks "the careful
mother could not have taken her daughter" to Vernet's studio. A couple
of live horses, not unfrequently three, an equal number of stuffed ones,
camp kettles, broken limbers, pieces of artillery, an overturned
ammunition waggon, a collection of uniforms, that would have made the
fortune of a costumier, scattered all over the place; drums, swords,
guns and saddles: and, amidst this confusion, a score of veterans, some
of whom had been comrades-in-arms and who seemed oblivious, for the time
being, of their hard-earned promotion in the company of those who had
been less lucky than they, every man smoking his hardest and telling his
best garrison story: all these made up a scene worthy of Vernet himself,
but somewhat appalling to the civilian who happened to come upon it
unawares.

Vernet was never happier than when at work under such circumstances.
Perched on a movable scaffolding or on a high