The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (10.1896)

Two Stories

By Ella D’Arcy

I—The Death Mask

The Master was dead ; and Peschi, who had come round to
the studio to see about some repairs—part of the ceiling had
fallen owing to the too lively proceedings of Dubourg and his
eternal visitors overhead—Peschi displayed a natural pride that it
was he who had been selected from among the many mouleurs of
the Quarter, to take a mask of the dead man.

All Paris was talking of the Master, although not, assuredly,
under that title. All Paris was talking of his life, of his genius,
of his misery, and of his death. Peschi, for the moment, was sole
possessor of valuable unedited details, to the narration of which
Hiram P. Corner, who had dropped in to pass the evening with
me, listened with keenly attentive ears.

Corner was a recent addition to the American Art Colony ;
ingenuous as befitted his eighteen years, and of a more than
improbable innocence. Paris, to him, represented the Holiest of
Holies ; the dead Master, by the adorable impeccability of his
writings, figuring therein as one of the High Priests. Needless
to say, he had never come in contact with that High Priest, had
never even seen him ; while the Simian caricatures which so
The Yellow Book—Vol. X. q frequently