room for trying on riding-habits, and another for the chief of the corsage department, to say nothing of little rooms draped with blue, brown, or red for special purposes.  Over these dingy carpets and among these old tapestries and sombre furniture glide noiselessly from room to room young women on whose sloping shoulders and lissome figures the “creations” of Messieurs les Couturiers show to the best advantage.  These are the demoiselles-mannequins, or essayeuses,—­mute but breathing models, who seem to have lost all human animation in their occupation of mere clothes-wearers, automata with weary faces, whose sole business is to carry on their backs from morning until night luminous vesture.  The ordinary pay of the demoiselle-mannequin in the grand establishments is from sixty to eighty dollars a month, with half board; but some of them who have exceptionally elegant figures and perfect bearing are paid fancy prices, reaching as much in rare cases as two thousand dollars a year.

Imagine the appearance of these saloons between two and five o’clock in the afternoon during the season, filled as they are with chattering and finely-dressed ladies,—­Parisiennes, Russians with their lazy accent, English and Americans talking in their own tongue, princesses of the Almanach de Gotha and princesses of the footlights, and even of the demi-monde, all united in adoration of the idol of fashion.  A confused murmur of musical voices rises in an atmosphere impregnated with the perfumes of ylang-ylang, heliotrope, peau d’Espagne, jonquil, iris, poudre de riz, and odor di femina.  The heads of the different departments are seen passing to and fro with fragments of a dress or a corsage in their arms, and amid the buzzing assembly the models move incessantly, like animated statues, silent and majestic.  From time to time the voice of the great artist is heard giving brief and imperious orders, or scolding plaintively because a ruche has been substituted for a flounce on the dress of Madame X——­, or a light fur for a dark fur on the mantle of the Baronne de V——­,—­“a pale blonde!  The whole thing will have to be made over again.  What can I do if I am not seconded?” he asks irritably.  “Truly, mesdemoiselles, c’est a se donner au diable!” With these words flung at a little group of employees, the great man appears.  He is a short man, dressed in light-gray trousers, a blue coat with a broad velvet collar and silk lappels in which are stuck a few pins for use in sudden inspirations, a flowered waistcoat, and a heavy watch-chain.  His head is bald and surrounded by a fringe of dust-colored gray hair, frizzled so finely that it looks like swans’-down.  His whiskers and moustache have the same fine and woolly appearance.  His blue eyes look worn and faded; his face has flushed red patches on a pale anaemic ground; his expression is one of subdued suffering, due to the continual neuralgia by which he is tormented, thanks to the strong perfumes which his elegant customers