Читать книгу The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter - Henri Murger - Страница 7

BEHOLD how Chance (styled by sceptics the business-agent of Providence) brought together in a single day every one of the individuals who afterwards met in the bonds of brotherly union, constituting an inner circle in that fraction of the country of Bohemia which the present author has endeavoured to make known to the public.

One morning (it was the 8th of April) Alexandre Schaunard, who cultivated the two liberal arts of music and painting, was suddenly startled out of his slumber by a lusty peal from the king of a neighbouring poultry-yard, who acted as his alarm clock.

“Good gracious!” cried Schaunard, “this feathered timepiece of mine is fast. Impossible! It cannot be to-day already!”

So saying he skipped nimbly out of a piece of furniture of his own industrious invention, a kind of Jack-of-all-trades, which played the rôle of a bedstead by night (and, without boasting, played it passably ill), while by day it represented everything else, the rest of the furniture having been absent ever since the previous winter—a remarkably rigorous season.

Schaunard proceeded next to wrap himself against the nipping breeze of morning in a pink spangled satin petticoat which he used as a dressing-gown. This piece of finery had been left behind in his room one night after a masked ball by a Folly, foolish to the extent of trusting to Schaunard’s specious promises, when the latter, as the Marquis de Mondor, jingled a dozen crowns seductively in his pockets. The said coins, having been cut out of a sheet of base metal with a punch, possessed a purely fancy value, and formed indeed a part of the accessories of a costume borrowed from the theatre.

His morning toilet thus completed, the artist flung open first the window, then the shutter. A ray of sunshine flashed in like an arrow, till he was fain to close a pair of eyes still veiled in the mists of slumber; and at that very moment a clock struck five from a neighbouring steeple.

“It is really the dawn,” muttered Schaunard. “An astonishing fact; but there is a mistake all the same,” he continued, going up to an almanack on the wall. “The indications of science affirm that at this season of the year the sun ought not to rise before half-past five. It is just five o’clock, and the sun is up already! Blameworthy zeal! The planet is in the wrong. I shall complain to the Astronomical Board. And yet,” he went on, “it is time I began to feel a little anxiety on my own account. To-day, no doubt, immediately succeeds to yesterday, and as yesterday was the 7th, to-day must be the 8th of April, unless Saturn has taken to walking backwards. From the tenor of this document,” he continued (scanning a formal notice to quit pinned to the wall), “I gather that this day I am bound to leave this room clear of all effects by noon precisely, after counting into the hands of M. Bernard, my landlord, the sum of seventy-five francs, representing three quarters’ rent, now due, which he claims in execrable handwriting. And I, as usual, hoped that Chance would take this matter in hand and settle it for me; but it rather looks as if Chance had not found time for it. In fact, I have six hours left, and by making good use of the time I may, perhaps——Oh, come, let us get to work!”

Schaunard was proceeding to dress himself in a great-coat of some once shaggy material, now irremediably bald, when suddenly, as if a tarantula had bitten him, he began to dance, executing a choregraphic composition of his own which had often won the honour of special attention from the police at public balls.

“Dear me! it is peculiar how the morning air gives one ideas! I am on the track of my tune, it seems to me! Let us see——” And Schaunard sat down half-dressed to the piano, roused the sleeping instrument with a tempestuous assortment of chords, and set off in quest of the melodious phrase which had eluded his pursuit so long.

“Do, sol, mi, do, la, si, do, ré. Boum! boum! Fa, ré, mi, ré. Eh! eh! That ré rings false, false as Judas!” cried Schaunard, thumping on the doubtful key. “Let us try the minor.

“A young person is pulling a daisy to pieces on a blue lake, and this thing ought to touch off her affliction neatly. ’Tis an idea that is past its first youth. But after all, since it’s the fashion, and as no publisher can be found bold enough to bring out a song without a blue lake in it, why you must conform. Do, sol, mi, do, la, si, do, ré. That is not so bad—it gives a good enough idea of a daisy, especially to people that are not very well up in botany. La, si, do, ré (there’s that rascally ré again!). Now to give a good idea of the blue lake you ought to have dampness, and azure, and moonlight (for there the moon is in it too). Stay now, it’s coming though; we must not forget the swan. Fa, mi, la, sol,” continued Schaunard, clinking the crystalline notes of the upper octave. “Now there is only the girl’s farewell, when she makes up her mind to take the plunge into the blue lake so as to rejoin her true love that lies buried under the snow. The ending is not very clear, but it is interesting. You want something tender and melancholy. There it comes; now for a dozen bars weeping like Magdalene, fit to split your heart in pieces. Brr! brr!” cried Schaunard, shivering in his spangled petticoat, “if it would only split a little firewood as well! There is a joist in the recess over the bed that gets very much in the way when I have company—to dinner. I might light a bit of fire with that (la, la. ré, mi)—for I feel inspiration coming on me with a cold in the head. Pooh! so much the worse! Let us get on with drowning the girl.”

Schaunard’s fingers tortured the quivering keyboard, as with gleaming eyes and straining ears he pursued the melody that seemed to hover nymph like above him, but declined to be caught in the maze of sounds that rose like a fog from the vibrating instrument.

“Now we will see how my music and the poet’s words hang together,” he continued, and in an unpleasant voice he began to try over some poetry of the order peculiar to comic opera and the lyric stage—

“The maid with the golden hair

Flings her mantilla by,

Then to the heavens so fair

Raises a tear-dimmed eye;

Then in the silvery wave

Rippling the lake so blue——

“What! what!” cried Schaunard, justly indignant. “A silvery wave in a blue lake. I never noticed that till now. Too romantic by half. After all, the poet is an idiot; he never saw silver nor yet a lake in his life. His ballad is stupid into the bargain; the length of his lines does not fit into my music. I shall compose my own words in future, which is to say that I mean to set about it, and that no later than at once. I feel I am in the vein. I will rough out some model couplets and adapt my tune to them afterwards.”

Schaunard, with his head between his hands, assumed the pensive attitude proper to a mortal in commerce with the Muse. Then, after a few moments of this divine intercourse, he brought into the world one of the misshapen conceptions known as dummy-verses, which librettists throw off with considerable facility, to serve as a provisional basis for the composer’s art. Schaunard’s dummy, however, was not devoid of common sense. It represented accurately enough the disturbance aroused in his brain by the brutal reality of the date—the 8th of April.

Here are the couplets—

Eight and eight make sixteen

(Six, and you carry the one);

Pleased and proud I had been

If, ere the quarter was done,

I had found some one to lend

(Somebody honest and poor)

Eight hundred francs to a friend;

I’d have paid up, I am sure.

REFRAIN.

Then, when a quarter to twelve

Sounds from the dial of Fate,

I’ll go to my landlord myself (thrice),

And settle accounts up to date.

“The deuce!” exclaimed Schaunard, looking over his composition; “self and twelve! A beggarly pair of rhymes, but I have not time now to enrich them. Let us try the music wedded to the words.”

Again he attacked his ballad, with a frightful nasal intonation peculiarly his own. The result was doubtless pleasing to him, for he hailed it with the jubilant grin which, like a circumflex accent, bestrode his visage whenever he was particularly pleased with himself. But his proud ecstasy was of short duration.

Eleven o’clock sounded from the neighbouring steeple. Every sonorous stroke, ringing through the miserable Schaunard’s chamber, died away in mocking echoes that seemed to inquire, “Are you ready?”

He started violently on his chair.

“Time runs like a stag. I have to find seventy-five francs and new lodgings, and only three-quarters of an hour to do it in—which I never shall. It is altogether too much in the conjuring line. See here, I will give myself five minutes to find out how to do it,” and, burying his head between his knees, he dived into the abysmal depths of reflection.

The five minutes went by. Schaunard lifted his head again, but he had found nothing that in the least resembled his seventy-five francs.

“If I am to get out of this there is precisely one way of setting about it, and that is to walk out quite naturally. My friend Chance may be taking a stroll outside in the sun; he surely will offer me hospitality until I can settle with M. Bernard.”

So saying, Schaunard stuffed everything that could be stowed into his great-coat pockets (two receptacles capacious as cellars), tied up a selection of linen into a bundle, took leave of his room with a few words of farewell, and went downstairs.

The concierge seemed to be on the look-out, for he called across the yard to Schaunard, and barred his passage out.

“Hi! M. Schaunard. Can you have forgotten? To-day is the 8th.”

“Eight and eight make sixteen

(Six, and you carry the one),”

hummed Schaunard. “It is the one thought in my mind.”

“You are a little behindhand with your moving, and that is a fact,” remarked the concierge. “It is half-past eleven; the new tenant may come in at any moment and want your room. You had better look sharp.”

“Very well, then, just let me pass. I am going out to find a cart to remove my things.”

“No doubt; but there is one little formality to discharge first. My orders are not to let you take away so much as a hair till you have paid up what you owe for the three last terms. You are ready to do so, I suppose?”

“Rather!” returned Schaunard, taking a step forward.

“Then, if you will step into my room, I will give you the receipts at once.”

“I will look in for that when I come back.”

“But why not now?” persisted the man.

“I am going out to get change.”

“Oho! you are going out to get change, are you?” returned the other suspiciously. “Well, then, just to oblige you, I’ll take care of that little bundle you have under your arm; you might find it in your way.”

“Monsieur le concierge!” said Schaunard with much dignity, “is it possible that you harbour any suspicions of me? Can you suppose that I am capable of removing my furniture in a pocket-handkerchief?”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” replied the man, lowering his tone a little, “those are my orders. M. Bernard expressly forbade me to allow you to take away one hair until you had paid up.”

“Now, just look,” said Schaunard, untying his bundle, “there are no hairs here. These are shirts that I am taking to the laundress, not twenty paces away, next door to the money-changer’s.”

“That is another thing,” the concierge admitted after a scrutiny of the contents. “If it’s a fair question, M. Schaunard, may I ask for your new address?”

“I am staying in the Rue de Rivoli,” Schaunard answered coolly; but by this time he had one foot in the street, and was out and away at his utmost speed.

“Rue de Rivoli,” muttered the concierge with a finger to his nose, “Rue de Rivoli. It is very odd that anybody should let him take a room in the Rue de Rivoli without coming here to ask about him, very odd! After all, he can’t take away his things, at any rate, without paying his rent. If only the new lodger does not come in just as M. Schaunard is going out. A pretty row there would be on the stairs! Hullo! just as I thought,” he cried, suddenly popping his head out at the wicket, “here comes the new lodger himself.”

A young man with a white Louis XIII. hat was, in fact, turning in under the archway, and behind him came a commissionaire who seemed to be by no means bending under his burden.

“Is my room at liberty?” inquired this person as the concierge came out to meet him.

“Not yet, sir, but it will be ready directly. The last tenant has gone out to find a cart to fetch his things. And in the meantime you can put your furniture down in the courtyard.”

“I am afraid it will rain,” returned the new tenant, placidly chewing the stalks of a bunch of violets that he held between his teeth, “and then my furniture would be damaged.” He turned to the man behind him who certainly carried a load of objects of some kind, though the concierge would have been puzzled to tell exactly what they were. “Put them down here in the entrance,” continued the man in the white hat, “and go back to my old lodgings for the rest of my valuable furniture and works of art.”

The commissionaire accordingly proceeded to stack a series of canvas-covered frames against the wall. Each separate leaf was some six or seven feet high, and apparently, if they were put end to end, they might spread out to any required extent. Their owner tilted one of them forward and looked inside.

“Look here!” he cried, pointing to a notch torn in the canvas. “Here is a misfortune! You have cracked my great Venetian mirror! Next time try to mind what you are about, and be particularly careful of my book-case.”

“What does he mean with his Venetian mirror?” muttered the concierge, peering suspiciously at the stack of frames. “There is no looking-glass there. It is a joke, of course; the thing looks like a screen to me. At any rate, we shall soon see what he brings next.”

“Your lodger is going to let me have the room directly, is he not? It is half-past twelve, I should be glad to move in,” remarked the new tenant.

“I don’t think he will be long now,” said the concierge. “Besides, there’s no harm done yet, seeing that your furniture is still to come,” he added, laying some stress on the last few words. The young man was just about to reply when an orderly in dragoon’s uniform entered the yard.

“M. Bernard?” inquired the dragoon, drawing a letter from a big leather pouch that flapped against him at every movement.

“This is where he lives.”

“Then here is a letter for him. Give me a receipt for it,” and he held out a printed form for signature.

“Excuse me,” said the concierge as he retired into the house, addressing the owner of the frames, now tramping impatiently up and down the yard, “this is a letter from the Government, and I must go up to M. Bernard with it. He is my employer.”

M. Bernard was in the act of shaving when his concierge appeared.

“What do you want, Durand?”

“An orderly has just come and brought this for you, sir,” said Durand, removing his cap. “It is from the Government.” As he spoke he held out an envelope stamped with the seal of the War Office.

M. Bernard grew so excited that he all but cut himself with his razor. “Good Lord!” cried he. “The War Office! I am sure it is my nomination as Chevalier of the Legion of Honour that I’ve been asking for this long while. My extreme respectability is meeting with recognition at last! Here, Durand,” he added, fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, “here are five francs for you. Go and drink my health. Stop a bit, though, I haven’t my purse about me; you shall have it in a moment. Wait.”

The concierge’s experience of his employer left him quite unprepared for such an overwhelming outburst of generosity. He was so moved by it that he forgot himself and put his cap on again.

At any other moment M. Bernard would have dealt severely with this breach of the laws of the social hierarchy; but now it seemed to pass unperceived. He put on his spectacles, broke the seal with the respectful emotion of a vizier receiving a letter from the sultan, and began to read the document. At the very first line a ghastly grimace deepened little crimson wrinkles in the fat of his monk’s jowl; his little eyes darted forth angry sparks that all but set the bristling tufts of his wig on fire, and by the time he had done, so chop-fallen was he, that an earthquake might have shaken every feature of his countenance.

These are the contents of the missive for which M. Durand had duly given the Government a receipt. This is the despatch indited upon War Office stationery, and brought at hot speed by a dragoon:—

“SIR AND LANDLORD,—Policy, which, according to mythology, is the grandmother of good manners, compels me to inform you that a painful necessity forbids me to conform to the established usage of paying rent, more especially when rent is due. Until this morning I had cherished the hope that it might be in my power to celebrate this glorious day by discharging three quarters’ arrears. Fond dream! chimerical illusion! Even as I slumbered on the pillow of security, ill-luck (in Greek ανανκὴ)—ill-luck dispersed my hopes. The receipts on which I counted failed to make an appearance (heavens! how bad trade is just now!)—they failed to appear, I say, for out of very considerable sums owing to me I have so far received but three francs—and they were borrowed. I do not propose to offer them to you. Better days are in store, do not doubt it, sir, both for our fair France and for me. So soon as they shall dawn I will try to inform you of the fact, and to withdraw from your premises the valuables that I now leave in your keeping. To you, sir, I entrust them, and to the protection of the enactment which forbids you to dispose of them within a twelvemonth, should you feel tempted to try that method of recovering the sums for which you stand credited on the ledger page of my scrupulous integrity. My pianoforte I recommend particularly to your care, as also the large picture-frame containing sixty specimen locks of hair of every shade of capillary hue, each one shorn from the brows of the Graces by the scalpel of Eros.

“So, sir, my landlord, you are free to dispose of the roof that erewhile sheltered me. I hereby grant permission to that effect. Witness my hand and seal.

“ALEXANDRE SCHAUNARD.”

Schaunard had gone to a friend, a clerk in the War Department, and written the epistle in his office.

When M. Bernard had read this missive to the end he crumpled it up indignantly. Then, as his eyes fell on old Durand, who stood waiting for the promised five francs, he asked him roughly what he was doing there.

“Waiting, sir.”

“For what?”

“Why, sir, you were so generous; er—er—the good news, sir!” stammered out the concierge.

“Get out! What, you rascal, do you stand and speak to me with your head covered?”

“But, sir——”

“Don’t answer me. There. No, wait a bit though. We will go up to that scoundrelly artist’s room. He has gone off without paying his rent.”

“What!” cried Durand. “M. Schaunard?”

“Yes,” said the landlord, his fury rising like Nicollet in a crescendo. “Yes. And if he has taken a single thing with him, out you go. Do you understand? Out you go-o-o!”

“It can’t be,” the poor concierge muttered. “M. Schaunard has not moved out. He went out for change to pay you, sir, and to order a cart round to fetch his things.”

“Fetch his things!” screamed M. Bernard. “Quick! he is up there after it now, I’ll be bound. He set the trap to get you out of the way, and did the trick! idiot that you are!”

“Oh, Lord! idiot that I am!” cried old Durand, and, quaking from head to foot before the Olympian wrath of his betters, he was dragged down the staircase.

Arrived in the courtyard, Durand was hailed at once by the young fellow in the white hat.

“Look here, concierge,” cried he, “am I going to be put in possession of my room? Is to-day the 8th of April? Did I engage the lodgings here and pay you the luck-penny, or did I not?”

“I beg your pardon, sir, I am at your service,” broke in the landlord. “Durand, I shall speak to this gentleman myself. Go upstairs. That scoundrel Schaunard is there packing up his things, no doubt. Lock him in, if you can catch him, and then go out for the police.”

Old Durand disappeared up the staircase. The landlord and the new-comer were left together.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” M. Bernard began, “but to whom have I the pleasure of speaking?”

“I am your new tenant, sir. I engaged a room here on the sixth floor, and I am beginning to grow impatient because I can’t move in.”

“You find me in despair,” exclaimed M. Bernard. “A difficulty has arisen between me and one of my tenants; in fact, the tenant whom you are about to replace.”

A voice sounded from above; it came from a window on the top story.

“M. Bernard, sir!” shouted old Durand. “M. Schaunard isn’t here! But his room is here! (Idiot that I am!) I mean to say he hasn’t taken anything away—not a single hair, M. Bernard, sir!”

“That is right. Come down,” called M. Bernard. Then, addressing the young man, “Dear me! have a little patience, I beg. My man shall stow all the insolvent lodger’s furniture in the cellar, and you shall move in in half an hour. Besides, your own furniture isn’t here yet.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” the new-comer returned placidly. M. Bernard took a look about him, but he saw nothing save the huge screens that had previously made his concierge uneasy.

“Eh, what? I beg your pardon. Eh? I don’t see any,” he murmured.

“Look,” returned the other, and he opened out the leaves of the screen, displaying to the landlord’s gaze a palatial interior full of jasper pillars and bas-reliefs and pictures by great masters.

“But—your furniture?”

“Here it is,” and, with a wave of the hand, he indicated the sumptuous splendours of the painted palace, part of a set of decorations for the amateur stage, a recent purchase at the Hotel Bullion.

“I am pleased to believe, sir, that you have something more solid in the way of furniture than that.”

“What, genuine Boule!”

“I must have some guarantee for my rent, you understand.”

“The deuce! Isn’t a palace good enough to cover the rent of a garret?”

“No, sir. I must have furniture—genuine mahogany furniture.”

“Alas! yet neither gold nor mahogany can make us happy, to quote the ancients. And, speaking for myself, I cannot endure it. Mahogany is a stupid sort of wood; everybody has mahogany!”

“But after all, sir, you have some furniture of some kind, I suppose?”

“No. It fills up the space till there is no room for anything else. As soon as you bring chairs into a place you do not know where to sit.”

“Still, you have a bedstead? How do you lie down at night?”

“I lie down trusting in Providence, sir.”

“I beg your pardon, one more question. What is your profession, if you please?”

At that very moment in walked the commissionaire for the second time. Among the various objects slung over his shoulders appeared an unmistakable easel. Old Durand pointed this out in dismay to the landlord.

“Oh, sir, he is a painter!”

“An artist! I knew it!” M. Bernard exclaimed in his turn (and the hairs of his wig stood upright with fright). “An artist!!! But” (turning to the concierge) “did you not make any inquiries about this gentleman? Did you not know what he did?”

“Lord, sir, he gave me five francs for my luck-penny; how was I to imagine that——”

“When you have done,” began the owner of the easel, but M. Bernard adjusted his spectacles on his nose with aplomb.

“Sir,” said he, “since you have no furniture you cannot move it in. I am legally entitled to decline a lodger who brings no guarantee.”

“And how about my word?” the artist inquired with dignity.

“It is no equivalent for furniture. You can look for lodgings somewhere else. Durand shall give you back your luck-penny.”

“Eh?” cried the dumbfounded concierge, “I paid it into the savings-bank.”

“But I cannot find another lodging all in a minute,” objected he of the hat. “Let me have a day’s shelter, at any rate.”

“Go to the hotel,” returned M. Bernard. “By-the-by,” he added quickly as a sudden thought struck him, “I will let you have the room furnished if you like. My insolvent lodger’s things are up there. Only the rent, as you know, in such cases is paid in advance.”

“The question is how much you want for the den,” said the artist, seeing there was no other way out of it.

“But it is a very good room; the rent will be twenty-five francs a month, under the circumstances. You pay in advance.”

“So you have said already; the phrase hardly deserves the honour of an encore.” He fell to fumbling in his pockets. “Have you change for five hundred francs?”

“Eh? what?” exclaimed his amazed landlord.

“Oh, well, call it half a thousand, then. Have you never seen such a thing before?” continued the artist, waving the note before the eyes of landlord and concierge. The latter appeared to lose his balance completely at the sight.

“I will give you change,” M. Bernard began respectfully. “There will only be twenty francs to take, since Durand is giving you back your luck-penny.”

“He may keep it,” said the artist, “on condition that he will come up every morning to tell me the day of the week, the day of the month, the quarter of the moon, and what kind of a day it is, and what form of government we are living under.”

“Oh, sir!” cried old Durand, bowing to an angle of ninety degrees.

“All right, my good fellow, you will act as my almanack. And in the meantime you will help my commissionaire with the moving in.”

“I will send you your receipt directly, sir,” added the landlord. And that very evening Marcel the painter was installed as M. Bernard’s new lodger. Schaunard had fled, and his garret was transformed into a palace.

The said Schaunard, meanwhile, was beating up Paris for money.

Schaunard had elevated borrowing into a fine art. Foreseeing that it might be necessary to “oppress” foreigners, he had learned the requisite formulæ for borrowing five francs in every language under the sun. He had made a profound study of the whole repertory of ruses by which the precious metals are wont to escape their pursuers. No pilot is better acquainted with the state of the tides than he with the times of low and high water; which is to say, the days when his friends and acquaintances were sure to be in funds. So much so, indeed, that if he were seen entering any particular house, people would say, not “There is M. Schaunard,” but, “To-day is the first, or the fifteenth of the month.” Partly to facilitate the collection of this kind of tithe which he levied when hard up, partly to spread it evenly over the area of persons capable of meeting the call, Schaunard had drawn up alphabetical lists of all his acquaintances, and tabulated them under the headings of quarters and arrondissements. Opposite each name he set down the highest possible sum that he could expect to borrow in proportion to the owner’s means, the dates when he was in funds, a time-table of meals, together with the probable bill of fare. Schaunard kept besides a little set of books in perfect order, in which he entered all the sums that he borrowed down to the most minute fractions, for he had no mind to burden himself with debt beyond a certain figure, and the amount of that figure still hung on the pen of an uncle in Normandy whose property he was one day to inherit. So soon as Schaunard owed twenty francs to any one individual, he stopped borrowing and repaid the money in a lump, even if he had to borrow from others to whom he owed smaller amounts. In this way he always kept up a certain credit on the market, which credit he was pleased to style his “floating debt,” and as it was known that he invariably paid his debts so soon as his resources permitted him to do so, people were very ready to oblige him whenever they could.

But to-day, since eleven o’clock in the morning when he started out to scrape together those seventy-five indispensable francs, he had only succeeded in making up one poor little five-franc piece. This had been done with the collaboration of the letters M V and R on his famous list; all the rest of the alphabet was passing through a precisely similar crisis, and this brought his quest to an end.

By six o’clock a ferocious appetite was ringing the dinner-bell within, and he had reached the Barrière du Maine, where the letter U was domiciled. Schaunard had a serviette ring in U’s establishment, whenever there were serviettes. The porter called after him as he went past.

“Where are you going, sir?”

“Up to M. U——.”

“He is out.”

“And madame?”

“She is out too. They went out to dinner and left a message with me for one of their friends who was sure to come this evening, they said. In fact they were expecting you, and this is the address they left with me,” added the porter, holding out a scrap of paper.

Schaunard read these words in his friend U’s handwriting:—

“Gone to dine with Schaunard, Rue—Come and look us up.”

“Well, well,” thought he as he went away, “when chance comes in pretty tricks he plays!”

Then Schaunard bethought himself of a little eating-house only a few steps away, where he had made a meal once or twice before for a trifling sum. To this establishment, known to lower Bohemia as La Mère Cadet, he now betook himself. La Mère Cadet, half tavern, half restaurant, situated in the Chaussée du Maine, is patronised largely by carters of the Orléans Road with a sprinkling of cantatrices from Montparnasse and first walking gentlemen from Bobino’s. In summer the place is crammed with young aspirants from studios round about the Luxembourg, literary gentlemen unknown to fame, and scribblers attached to more or less mysterious journals, who flock to La Mère Cadet, famous for stewed rabbit, genuine sauerkraut and a thin white wine with a smack of brimstone.

Two or three stunted trees spread a few sickly green leaves over the heads of diners in the establishment; and beneath the shadow of these shrubs, known to frequenters of La Mère Cadet as “the grove,” Schaunard now took his place.

“My word! what must be, must!” said he to himself. “Now for a blow-out, a private jollification all to myself.”

And without more ado, he called for soup, a half portion of sauerkraut and two half portions of stewed rabbit; having remarked that in this case two halves are greater than the whole by at least a quarter.

His order attracted the attention of a young person in white, with a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair; she wore dancing slippers, and a veil of imitated imitation floated over a pair of shoulders which might have been suffered to preserve their incognito. She was a singer from the Théâtre Montparnasse, where the wings are entrances, as one may say, of La Mère Cadet’s kitchen. The lady having stepped in for refreshments between the acts of Lucia di Lammermoor was taking a half-cup of coffee, after a dinner composed simply and solely of an artichoke with oil and vinegar.

“Two portions of stewed rabbit, the dog!” she muttered to the waitress, “the young man goes in for high feeding. What is to pay, Adèle?”

“One artichoke, four; one half-cup, four; and bread, one sou. Nine sous altogether.”

“Here it is,” returned the vocalist, and out she went, humming, “Cet amour que Dieu me donne.”

“I say! She can take the la!” remarked a mysterious individual sitting at Schaunard’s table behind a rampart of old books.

“Take it!” ejaculated Schaunard. “I rather think she takes it and keeps it to herself. Besides,” he added, pointing to the plate on which Lucia di Lammermoor had just partaken of her artichoke, “nobody has any idea what it is to steep your headnotes in vinegar.”

“It is a powerful acid, and that is a fact,” admitted the other. “The city of Orleans produces a brand which justly enjoys a great reputation.”

Schaunard took a closer look at this person, who angled thus for conversation. The fixed gaze of the man’s big blue eyes, which always seemed to be looking out for something, gave to his face that expression of smug serenity which you may remark in the visages of seminarists. His complexion was of the colour of old ivory, except for a dab of opaque brick-red upon the cheeks; his mouth might have been drawn by a student of the first principles of design (if somebody had given a jog to the draughtsman’s elbow). The lips turned up a little, negro-fashion, disclosing a set of dog’s teeth; the double chin below reposed on the folds of a white cravat tied so that one end menaced the firmament while the other pointed to earth. The hair of this personage flowed in a yellow torrent from under the prodigious brim of a tawny-brown felt hat. He wore a long, nut-brown overcoat with a cape, a threadbare garment, rough as a nutmeg-grater. A mass of papers and pamphlets protruded from its yawning pockets. He sat with a book propped up before him on the table, careless of Schaunard’s scrutiny, eating his choucroûte garnie with evident relish, for sounds of unqualified satisfaction escaped him at frequent intervals; and now again, taking a pencil from behind his ear, he jotted down a note in the margin of the work which he was perusing.

Schaunard all at once struck his knife against a glass. “How about my stewed rabbit, eh?” he called.

The waitress came up with a plate in her hand.

“Monsieur,” she said, “stewed rabbit is off the bill. Here is the last portion, and this gentleman ordered it,” she added, setting it down in front of the man of books.

“Sacrebleu!” cried Schaunard. And in that “Sacrebleu” there was such a depth of melancholy disappointment that it went to the heart of the man of books. He effected a breach in the rampart of volumes, and pushed the plate through the gap, saying in his most dulcet tones—

“May I venture, monsieur, to entreat you to share this dish with me?”

“I cannot think of depriving you of it, monsieur.”

“Then would you deprive me of the pleasure of obliging you, monsieur?”

“Since you put it so, monsieur——” And Schaunard held out his plate.

“With your permission,” observed the stranger, “I will not offer you the head.”

“Oh, monsieur,” exclaimed Schaunard, “I shall not be the loser.”

But drawing back his plate he perceived that the stranger had helped him to the very morsel which he particularly desired (so he said) to keep for himself.

“Well, well,” Schaunard growled inwardly, “what was he after, with his politeness?”

“If the head is the noblest part of man,” continued the other, “it is the most disagreeable member of the rabbit. So a great many persons cannot endure it. With me it is different; I am extremely fond of it.”

“In that case I feel the liveliest regret that you should have deprived yourself on my account.”

“What? Pardon me,” said the man of books, “I kept the head for myself. I even had the honour to observe to you that——”

“Allow me,” said Schaunard, pushing his plate across for inspection. “What is this morsel?”

“Just heaven! What do I see? Ye gods! What, another head! ’Tis a bicephalous rabbit!”

“Bi——?”

“—cephalous. From the Greek. Indeed M. de Buffon (he who always wrote in full dress) cites examples of this natural curiosity. Well, upon my word! I am not sorry to have partaken of the phenomenon.”

Thanks to this incident, conversation did not languish. Schaunard, not to be behindhand in civility, called for an extra bottle. The bookman ordered another. Schaunard contributed a salad to the feast; the bookman, dessert. By eight o’clock there were six empty bottles on the table. Communicativeness, watered by libations of thin liquor, had brought them both insensibly to the point of autobiography, and they were as well acquainted as if they had been brought up together. The bookman having listened to Schaunard’s confidences, informed him in return that his name was Gustave Colline, that he exercised the profession of philosopher, and made a living by giving instruction in mathematics, pedagogy, botany and numerous other sciences which end in y.

What little money Colline made by giving lessons at pupils’ residences, he spent upon old books. His long, nut-brown overcoat was known to every bookstall on the quays from the Pont de la Concorde to the Pont Saint Michel, where his purchases were so numerous that it would have taken a lifetime and more to read them through. Nobody, he himself least of all, could tell what he did with his books. But the hobby had grown to the dimensions of a passion, so that if he chanced to go home at night without a new acquisition, he would adopt the saying of the Emperor Titus, and cry, “I have lost the day!” Schaunard was so fascinated by his engaging manners, by his talk (a mosaic of every known style), and by the atrocious puns which enlivened his conversation, that he asked leave on the spot to add Colline’s name to the famous list mentioned above. And when they left La Mère Cadet, towards nine o’clock, they had, to every appearance, carried on a dialogue with the bottle, and were passably disguised in liquor.

Colline proposed a cup of coffee, Schaunard agreed on condition that he should provide liqueurs. They turned accordingly into a café, at the sign of “Momus,” god of Sports and Laughter,* in the Rue Saint Germain l’Auxerrois.

A lively discussion was going on, as they entered, between two frequenters of that public establishment. One of these was a young man whose face was completely lost to sight in the depths of an enormous bushy beard of various shades of colour. By way of contrast, however, to this prodigious growth on cheek and chin, premature baldness, setting in above, had left his forehead as bare as a knee, save for a few straggling hairs (so few that you might count them), which strove in vain to hide its nakedness. A black coat, tonsured at the elbows, gave glimpses of other openings for ventilation at the armholes, whenever the wearer raised his arms; his trousers might possibly have been black, once; but his boots had never been new, the Wandering Jew might have tramped two or three times round the world in them already.

Schaunard noticed that his friend Colline exchanged a greeting with this person.

“Do you know that gentleman?” he asked the philosopher.

“Not exactly,” returned the other, “only I come across him sometimes at the Library. I believe he is a literary man.”

“His coat looks like it, at all events.”

The individual engaged in argument with the owner of the beard was a man of forty or so, marked out by nature, as it would seem, for an apoplectic seizure, to judge from the big head which reposed between his shoulders, without a neck between. “Idiocy” might be read in capital letters on the flattened forehead under his skull cap. M. Mouton—for that was his name—was registrar of deaths at the mayor’s office, in the Fourth Arrondissement.

“M. Rodolphe!” he was exclaiming in a falsetto voice, while he seized the young man with a beard by a button and shook him, “do you wish to have my opinion? Very well. All the newspapers are good for nothing. Look you here! Suppose now—I am the father of a family, hey? Good! And I drop into a café for a game of dominoes. Do you follow me?”

“Go on, go on,” said the person addressed as M. Rodolphe.

“Well,” continued old Mouton, punctuating his remarks by bringing his fist down on the table with a bang that set all the glasses and pint-pots trembling. “Well, I take a look at the papers. Good! What do I find? One says ‘white’ and another ‘black.’ Fiddle-diddle! What is that to me? I am a sober father of a family, coming here for——”

“A game of dominoes.”

“Every evening. Very well. Now, suppose, for the sake of saying something—you understand?”

“Very well,” said Rodolphe.

“I read an article that I don’t agree with. That puts me in a fury; I get all of a fluster, because, look you, the newspapers are full of lies from beginning to end. Yes, lies!” shrieked he in the shrillest, squeakiest notes of his squeaky voice, “and journalists are bandits, a set of paltry scriveners!”

“Still, M. Mouton——”

“Aye, bandits! They are at the bottom of everybody’s troubles; they got up the Revolution and the assignats. Murat, now; there’s proof for you.”

“I beg your pardon,” put in Rodolphe, “you mean Marat.”

“No, no, not at all. I mean Murat, for I saw his funeral myself as a boy——”

“I assure you——”

“The same that they made a play about at the Cirque. So there!”

“Well, well, just so. Murat it is.”

“Why, what have I been telling you this hour past?” cried the persistent Mouton. “Murat that used to write in a cellar, eh? Well, suppose now—weren’t the Bourbons in the right of it to guillotine him when he was playing them false?”

“Guillotine him? Who? Played them false—what!” exclaimed Rodolphe, buttonholing M. Mouton in his turn.

“Oh, well, Marat.”

“No, no, not at all, M. Mouton. You mean Murat! Hang it all! Let us know what we are talking about.”

“Certainly. Marat, and a low scoundrel he was. Betrayed the Emperor in 1815. That is what makes me say that all newspapers are alike,” added M. Mouton, returning to the theme which he had quitted for what he called an explanation. “For my own part, do you know what I should like, M. Rodolphe? Well, let us suppose now—I should like a good newspaper. Oh, not a big one. Good. No set phrases—that’s it!”

“You are very hard to please,” put in Rodolphe. “A newspaper without set phrases!”

“Well, yes; are you following my idea?”

“I am trying to.”

“A newspaper that just lets you know how the King is and about the crops. For after all, what is the good of all your gazettes, when nobody can make anything out of them? Suppose now that I am in the mayor’s office, am I not? I am registrar. Good! Well, it is as if people came and said to me, ‘M. Mouton, you register deaths; very well, do this and do that.’ Very well; what this, eh? and that, eh? Well, and it is the same thing with the newspapers,” he concluded.

“Evidently,” put in a neighbour, who had understood him. And M. Mouton went back to his game of dominoes amid the congratulations of those who shared his opinions.

“I have put him in his place,” he remarked, indicating Rodolphe, who had gone to join Schaunard and Colline at their table.

“What a dolt!” said Colline, glancing across at the registrar.

“He has a good head, with his eyelids like a carriage-hood, and eyes like loto-knobs,” remarked Schaunard, drawing out a wonderfully coloured cutty-pipe.

“By Jove, monsieur, you have a very pretty pipe there!” remarked Rodolphe.

“Oh, I have a still better one for great occasions,” Schaunard answered carelessly. “Just pass me the tobacco, Colline.”

“There!” cried the philosopher, “I have none left.”

“Allow me,” said Rodolphe, pulling a packet out of his pocket and laying it on the table.

Colline thought he ought to respond to this act of courtesy by the offer of a drink.

Rodolphe accepted. The conversation turned upon literature. Rodolphe, questioned as to his profession, confessed (for his clothes betrayed him) to his relations with the Muses, and stood drinks all round. The waiter was going to take the bottle away, but Schaunard requested him to be so kind as to overlook it. Two five-franc pieces were jingling in one of Colline’s pockets, and the silvery sound of the duet had reached Schaunard’s ears. Rodolphe meanwhile quickly overtook his friends, reached the point of expansiveness, and poured out confidences in his turn.

The trio would, no doubt, have spent the rest of the night in the café, if they had not been requested to leave. Outside in the street, they had scarcely gone ten paces (which distance was accomplished in about a quarter of an hour) when they were overtaken by a deluge of rain. Colline and Rodolphe lived at opposite ends of Paris; the former in the Ile Saint Louis, the latter at Montmartre. As for Schaunard, he had completely forgotten that he had no lodging at all, and offered his friends hospitality.

“Come home with me,” he said; “I lodge near by, and we will spend the night in talking literature and art.”

“You shall play for us,” said Colline, “and Rodolphe will recite his own poetry.”

“Faith, yes,” added Schaunard, “we must laugh; we can only live once.”

Schaunard had some little difficulty in recognising his house; but arrived in front of it, he sat down for a moment on a kerbstone, while his friends went over to a wine-shop, which still kept open, in search of the first elements of supper. On their return Schaunard rapped several times on the door, for he had a dim recollection that the porters always kept him waiting. At last it opened. Old Durand, in the balmy depths of his beauty sleep, forgot that Schaunard had ceased to be an inmate of his house, and heard the name called without putting himself out in the least.

The ascent of the stairs was a slow and no less difficult business. Schaunard went first, but on arriving on the top landing he found a key already in the lock of his door, and uttered a cry of astonishment.

“What is the matter?” asked Rodolphe.

“I can make nothing of this,” murmured Schaunard; “the key that I carried off with me this morning is here sticking in the lock! Ha! we shall soon see. I put it in my pocket. Eh, by Jove! and here it is, too!” he cried, holding it up.

“It is witchcraft!”

“It is a phantasmagoria!” (from Colline).

“A fancy!” (from Rodolphe).

“But,” demurred Schaunard, with growing terror audible in his voice, “but, do you hear that?”

“What?”

“What?”

“My piano, playing all by itself—ut, la, mi, ré, do, la, sı, sol, ré. Rascally ré, that it is! It never will keep in tune.”

“This is not your room, of course,” said Rodolphe; and leaning heavily on Colline, he whispered, “he is drunk.”

“I think so. In the first place, that is not a piano; it is a flute.”

“Why, you are drunk too, my dear fellow,” said the poet to the philosopher, who by this time was sitting on the floor. “It is a violin!”

“A v——fiddle-de-dee! I say, Schaunard,” stammered Colline, pulling his friend by the legs, “that is good, is that! Here is this gentleman saying that it is a vio——”

“Confound it!” cried Schaunard, frightened out of his wits, “there is my piano playing away; it is witchcraft!”

“Phantasma—goria!” howled Colline, letting a bottle fall on the floor.

“Fancy!” yelled Rodolphe in his turn.

In the middle of the hubbub the door suddenly opened, and somebody appeared upon the threshold, holding a candle-sconce in which three pink candles were burning.

“What do you want, gentlemen?” he asked, bowing politely to the three friends.

“Oh, heaven! What have I done? I have made a mistake. This isn’t my room,” exclaimed Schaunard.

“Be so good as to excuse my friend, monsieur,” cried Rodolphe and Colline, speaking both at once. “He is more than half seas over.”

All at once a gleam of lucidity crossed Schaunard’s tipsy brain; he had just read an inscription chalked upon his door:—

“I have been here three times for my New Year’s gift.

“PHEMIE.”

“Yes,” cried he, “I do live here. That is the very visiting card which Phémie left me on New Year’s Day. This is my door; it is, indeed.”

“Dear me, monsieur,” protested Rodolphe, “I feel truly confused.”

“Believe me, monsieur,” Colline added, “my friend in his confusion has in me an energetic collaborator.”

The man in the doorway burst out laughing in spite of himself.

“If you will step into my room for a moment,” he said, “your friend will find out his mistake, no doubt, as soon as he sees the place.”

“With pleasure.” And the poet, taking one of Schaunard’s arms and the philosopher the other, they brought him into the room, or, to be accurate, into Marcel’s palace, which the reader has doubtless recognised.

Schaunard, gazing vaguely about him, muttered—

“It is astonishing how the place is improved.”

“Well, are you convinced now?” asked Colline.

But Schaunard had caught sight of the piano, and going up to it, tried over a scale or two.

“Eh! just listen to that now, all of you!” he said, striking chord after chord. “That is right! The animal knows its master: si la sol, fa mi ré. Ah, rascally ré! Always the same, that it is! I told you it was my piano.”

“He persists,” said Colline to Rodolphe.

“He persists,” said Rodolphe, turning to Marcel.

“That now,” added Schaunard, pointing to the spangled petticoat lying on a chair, “that is not my ornament, perhaps? Oho!”

And he looked Marcel between the eyes.

“And that——” he continued, pulling down the summons, of which mention has been made previously, and proceeding to read it aloud—

“ ‘Wherefore M. Schaunard is bound to remove his effects, and to leave the premises in tenantable repair, before noon on the eighth day of April. Due notice having been served on him by me, for which the cost is five francs.’ Aha! so I am not M. Schaunard, who was served with a notice by a bailiff, and received the honour of a stamp worth five francs? There again!” he cried, as he caught sight of his slippers on Marcel’s feet, “so those are not my Turkish slippers which beloved hands bestowed on me? Monsieur,” he added, addressing Marcel, “will you in your turn explain your presence among my Lares?”

“Gentlemen,” replied Marcel, addressing himself more particularly to Colline and Rodolphe, “this gentleman” (indicating Schaunard) “is, I confess, in his own room.”

“Ha!” cried Schaunard, “that is lucky!”

“But,” resumed Marcel, “so am I.”

“Still, monsieur,” Rodolphe broke in, “if our friend recognises——”

“Yes,” said Colline, “if our friend——”

“And if you on your side recollect,” added Rodolphe, “how comes it that——”

“Yes,” echoed Colline, “how comes it——”

“Will you kindly sit down, gentlemen?” replied Marcel, “and I will clear up the mystery.”

“Suppose we moisten the explanation?” hazarded Colline.

“And take a bit to eat,” added Rodolphe.

With that they all four sat down to table and attacked the piece of cold veal bought at the wine-shop, while Marcel proceeded to narrate what had passed that morning between him and the landlord when he came to move in.

“So,” said Rodolphe, “this gentleman is perfectly right. This is his room.”

“Pray consider yourself at home in it,” Marcel returned politely.

But it was only after immense trouble that Schaunard could be got to understand what had happened, and a comical incident still further complicated matters. Schaunard was looking for something in a wall cupboard when he came upon some money; it was the change which M. Bernard had given for the five-hundred franc bill.

“Ah, I knew it!” he cried; “I knew that Chance would not leave me in the lurch! I remember now! I went out this morning to look him up. He must have come in while I was out, as it was quarter-day. We crossed each other on the way, that is all. What a good thing I left the key in the drawer!”

“Sweet delusion!” murmured Rodolphe, as he saw Schaunard dividing the coins into equal piles.

“Illusion, delusion, such is life!” added the philosopher.

Marcel laughed.

An hour later all four were fast asleep.

Next day at noon they awoke, and at first seemed very much surprised at the company in which they found themselves. Schaunard, Colline and Rodolphe looked as though they had never met before, and addressed each other as “Monsieur.” Marcel was obliged to remind them that they all came in together the night before.

Old Durand came in at that very moment.

“Monsieur,” said he, addressing Marcel, “to-day is the ninth of April, eighteen hundred and forty . . . the streets are muddy, and His Majesty Louis Philippe is still King of France and Navarre. What next!” he exclaimed, catching sight of his former lodger. “M. Schaunard! Why how did you get in?”

“By telegraph,” said Schaunard.

“But I say,” continued old Durand, “you are a droll one, you are——”

“Durand,” said Marcel, “I do not care to have my man-servant join in conversation when I am present. Go to the restaurant near by and order in breakfast for four persons. Here is the menu,” he added, holding out a slip of paper. “Now go.”

“You invited me to supper last night, gentlemen,” Marcel went on, addressing his visitors, “allow me to offer you luncheon this morning, not in my room, but in yours,” he added, holding out his hand to Schaunard.

Luncheon over, Rodolphe asked permission to speak.

“Gentlemen,” he began, “permit me to leave you——”

“Oh, no,” Schaunard said in a sentimental tone, “let us never part again!”

“True, it is very pleasant here,” assented Colline.

“——to leave you for a moment,” continued Rodolphe. “The Iris, a journal devoted to the fashions, appears to-morrow. I, as editor, must go and correct my proofs, but I will be back in an hour.”

“The deuce!” cried Colline, “that reminds me I have a lesson to give to an Indian prince who has come to Paris to learn Arabic.”

“You can go to-morrow,” said Marcel.

“Oh no, the prince ought to pay me to-day. And besides, I must confess that this beautiful day would be completely spoilt for me if I did not take a look round the second-hand book market.”

“But you are coming back?” queried Schaunard.

“With the swiftness of a dart sped by a sure hand,” returned the philosopher, who loved eccentric metaphors.

And he went out with Rodolphe. Schaunard and Marcel were left alone together.

“By-the-by,” remarked the former, “how if instead of reclining upon the pillow of far niente I should issue forth in quest of gold wherewith to allay M. Bernard’s cupidity?”

“Why, do you still contemplate moving out?” Marcel asked uneasily.

“Lord! yes, there is no help for it,” said Schaunard. “I have had notice to quit served on me by a bailiff at a cost of five francs.”

“But if you are moving out, are you going to take away your furniture?”

“That is what I purpose to do; I am not going to leave a hair, as M. Bernard says.”

“The devil! then I shall be in a fix,” said Marcel, “for I took your room as a furnished apartment.”

“Stay a bit, though! true; aye, so it is,” returned Schaunard. “Pshaw,” he added ruefully, “there is nothing to show that I shall find my seventy francs to-day, or to-morow, or the next day.”

“Hold on, though,” cried Marcel, “I have an idea.”

“Produce it,” said Schaunard.

“This is the situation: legally speaking, this lodging is mine, for I paid a month’s rent in advance.”

“The room, yes; but as to the furniture, if I pay I have a legal right to remove it; and if I could, I would even remove it illegally,” said Schaunard.

“So as it stands,” continued Marcel, “you have furniture, and nowhere to put it; and I have a room, and nothing to put in it.”

“That is it.”

“For my own part, I like this room,” continued Marcel.

“So do I,” put in Schaunard, “never liked it like this before.”

“What do you say?”

“Liked it like, for liked it so much. Oh, I know my native language!”

“Well, so we can settle these matters,” Marcel went on. “Stay with me; I will find the lodgings, and you shall find the furniture.”

“And how about the rent?”

“I will pay what is owing, as I have money just now. It will be your turn next time. Consider it.”

“I never consider anything, especially if it is an offer that suits me. I accept out of hand. Music and painting are, in fact, sisters.”

“Sisters-in-law,”* rejoined Marcel, and at that moment Colline and Rodolphe came in together. They had met on the way.

“Gentlemen,” cried Rodolphe, jingling the money in his pockets, “I propose that those present should dine with me.”

“That is precisely what I was about to have the honour to propose myself,” said Colline, pulling a gold piece out of his pocket and sticking it in his eye. “My prince gave me this to buy a Hindostanee-Arabic grammar, for which I have just paid six sous sterling.”

“And I got the cashier of the Iris to let me have thirty francs in advance, on the pretext that I wanted the money to get myself vaccinated.”

“It is pay day, it seems,” remarked Schaunard, “I am the only one that has not taken handsel. It is humiliating.”

“Meantime, my offer of dinner is still open,” repeated Rodolphe.

“So is mine,” said Colline.

“Very well, let us toss to see who shall pay the bill.”

“No,” cried Schaunard, “I know a better way than that; an infinitely better way of getting out of the difficulty.”

“Let us see it!”

“Rodolphe shall give the dinner and Colline will entertain us at supper.”

“That is what I call the wisdom of Solomon,” cried the philosopher.

“It is worse than Gamacho’s wedding-feast,” added Marcel.

The dinner duly took place in a Provençal restaurant in the Rue Dauphine, well known for its ayoli and the literary tastes of its waiters. As it was expedient to leave room for supper, they ate and drank in moderation. The acquaintance begun the previous evening between Colline and Schaunard, and later still with Marcel, was ripening into intimacy. Each one of the party hoisted the flag of his opinions on art, and all four discovered that they possessed the same courage and the same hope. In the course of chat and discussion they perceived that they had sympathies in common; they all had the same turn for the light and dexterous word-play which raises laughter and leaves no wounds; and lastly, that all the fair virtues of youth had by no means departed from them and left their hearts empty, for they were readily moved by anything beautiful which they heard or saw. And since all four had left a common starting-point to reach the same goal, it seemed to them that it was something more than a mere everyday quid pro quo of Chance, which had brought them thus together; was it not quite possible that it might be Providence, who watches over those left to themselves, that had joined their hands and whispered in their ears the Evangelist’s words, “Love one another. Bear ye one another’s burdens,” sayings which ought to constitute the one and only Charter of Humanity?

The end of the meal found them almost grave. When Rodolphe got up and proposed that they should drink to the Future, Colline replied with a little speech that certainly was not taken out of an old book, nor had any pretension to style. He spoke quite simply in that artless vernacular which tells so well what is said so ill.

“What a fool the philosopher is!” muttered Schaunard, bending over his glass. “He has made me mix water with my wine.”

After dinner they went to the Café à Momus, where they had spent the previous evening. From that day the establishment became uninhabitable for the rest of its patrons.

Coffee and liqueurs despatched, the Bohemian clan (now definitely founded) returned to Marcel’s quarters, which received the name of “Schaunard’s Elysium.” Colline went out to order the promised supper, and the rest, meanwhile, provided themselves with crackers, rockets, and other pyrotechnical devices. These they let off from the windows before sitting down to supper; and the magnificent display fairly turned the house upside down, the four friends singing at the top of their voices—

“Let us celebrate this great day!”

Next morning they again found themselves together, but this time it did not cause them any astonishment. Before separating for the business of the day they shared a frugal lunch at the Café Momus, where they agreed to meet again in the evening. For a long time they kept to this daily routine.

These then are the characters who will pass in and out of the short stories which form this book. It is not a novel, and has no other pretension than that indicated by its title, for the Scenes of Bohemian Life are but studies of people belonging to a class hitherto misunderstood, whose chief fault is irregularity. Still, they can say in excuse that this irregularity is a necessity of their life.

* See CHAMPFLEURY, Les Confessions de Sylvius.

* Belle-sœurs.