and tied in around the waist. She pivoted on her legs, which were
tap-rooted, and her gown was yellow with black stripes. She proudly
exhibited unutterable mittens on a puffy pair of hands; the plumes of
a first-class funeral floated on an over-flowing bonnet; laces adorned
her shoulders, as round behind as they were before; consequently, the
spherical form of the cocoa-nut was perfect. Her feet, of a kind that
painters call abatis, rose above the varnished leather of the shoes in
a swelling that was some inches high. How the feet were ever got into
the shoes, no one knows.

Following these vegetable parents was a young asparagus, who presented
a tiny head with smoothly banded hair of the yellow-carroty tone that
a Roman adores, long, stringy arms, a fairly white skin with reddish
spots upon it, large innocent eyes, and white lashes, scarcely any
brows, a leghorn bonnet bound with white satin and adorned with two
honest bows of the same satin, hands virtuously red, and the feet of
her mother. The faces of these three beings wore, as they looked round
the studio, an air of happiness which bespoke in them a respectable
enthusiasm for Art.

"So it is you, monsieur, who are going to take our likenesses?" said
the father, assuming a jaunty air.

"Yes, monsieur," replied Grassou.

"Vervelle, he has the cross!" whispered the wife to the husband while
the painter's back was turned.

"Should I be likely to have our portraits painted by an artist who
wasn't decorated?" returned the former bottle-dealer.