“Hi! little one,” cried the first to see him, taking the crumbs of his bread and scattering them at the child.

“Whose child is he?”

“Goodness, how ugly!”

For a quarter of an hour Joseph stood still and bore the brunt of much teasing in the atelier of the great sculptor, Chaudet.  But after laughing at him for a time, the pupils were struck with his persistency and with the expression of his face.  They asked him what he wanted.  Joseph answered that he wished to know how to draw; thereupon they all encouraged him.  Won by such friendliness, the child told them he was Madame Bridau’s son.

“Oh! if you are Madame Bridau’s son,” they cried, from all parts of the room, “you will certainly be a great man.  Long live the son of Madame Bridau!  Is your mother pretty?  If you are a sample of her, she must be stylish!”

“Ha! you want to be an artist?” said the eldest pupil, coming up to Joseph, “but don’t you know that that requires pluck; you’ll have to bear all sorts of trials,—­yes, trials,—­enough to break your legs and arms and soul and body.  All the fellows you see here have gone through regular ordeals.  That one, for instance, he went seven days without eating!  Let me see, now, if you can be an artist.”

He took one of the child’s arms and stretched it straight up in the air; then he placed the other arm as if Joseph were in the act of delivering a blow with his fist.

“Now that’s what we call the telegraph trial,” said the pupil.  “If you can stand like that, without lowering or changing the position of your arms for a quarter of an hour, then you’ll have proved yourself a plucky one.”

“Courage, little one, courage!” cried all the rest.  “You must suffer if you want to be an artist.”

Joseph, with the good faith of his thirteen years, stood motionless for five minutes, all the pupils gazing solemnly at him.

“There! you are moving,” cried one.

“Steady, steady, confound you!” cried another.

“The Emperor Napoleon stood a whole month as you see him there,” said a third, pointing to the fine statue by Chaudet, which was in the room.

That statue, which represents the Emperor standing with the Imperial sceptre in his hand, was torn down in 1814 from the column it surmounted so well.

At the end of ten minutes the sweat stood in drops on Joseph’s forehead.  At that moment a bald-headed little man, pale and sickly in appearance, entered the atelier, where respectful silence reigned at once.

“What you are about, you urchins?” he exclaimed, as he looked at the youthful martyr.

“That is a good little fellow, who is posing,” said the tall pupil who had placed Joseph.

“Are you not ashamed to torture a poor child in that way?” said Chaudet, lowering Joseph’s arms.  “How long have you been standing there?” he asked the boy, giving him a friendly little pat on the cheek.