CHAPTER I

E-text prepared by Chuck Greif from digital text provided by the Worchel

Institute for the Study of Beat and Bohemian Literature

(http://home.swbell.net/worchel/index.html)

Note: This book by Henry Murger, originally published in 1851, was

the source of two operas titled "La Bohème"--one by Giacomo

Puccini (1896) and the other by Ruggero Leoncavallo (1897).

Project Gutenberg also has the original French version of

the book (Scènes de la vie de bohème); see

https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/18446.

BOHEMIANS OF THE LATIN QUARTER

by

HENRY MURGER

1888

Vizetelly & Co. London

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter I, How The Bohemian Club Was Formed

Chapter II, A Good Angel

Chapter III, Lenten Loves

Chapter IV, Ali Rodolphe; Or, The Turk Perforce

Chapter V, The Carlovingian Coin

Chapter VI, Mademoiselle Musette

Chapter VII, The Billows of Pactolus

Chapter VIII, The Cost Of a Five Franc Piece

Chapter IX, The White Violets

Chapter X, The Cape of Storms

Chapter XI, A Bohemian Cafe

Chapter XII, A Bohemian "At Home"

Chapter XIII, The House Warming

Chapter XIV, Mademoiselle Mimi

Chapter XV, Donec Gratus

Chapter XVI, The Passage of the Red Sea

Chapter XVII, The Toilette of the Graces

Chapter XVIII, Francine's Muff

Chapter XIX, Musette's Fancies

Chapter XX, Mimi in Fine Feather

Chapter XXI, Romeo and Juliet

Chapter XXII, Epilogue To The Loves Of Rodolphe And Mademoiselle Mimi

Chapter XXIII, Youth Is Fleeting

PREFACE

The Bohemians of whom it is a question in this book have no connection

with the Bohemians whom melodramatists have rendered synonymous with

robbers and assassins. Neither are they recruited from among the

dancing-bear leaders, sword swallowers, gilt watch-guard vendors, street

lottery keepers and a thousand other vague and mysterious professionals

whose main business is to have no business at all, and who are always

ready to turn their hands to anything except good.

The class of Bohemians referred to in this book are not a race of today,

they have existed in all climes and ages, and can claim an illustrious

descent. In ancient Greece, to go no farther back in this genealogy,

there existed a celebrated Bohemian, who lived from hand to mouth round

the fertile country of Ionia, eating the bread of charity, and halting

in the evening to tune beside some hospitable hearth the harmonious lyre

that had sung the loves of Helen and the fall of Troy. Descending the

steps of time modern Bohemia finds ancestors at every artistic and

literary epoch. In the Middle Ages it perpetuates the Homeric tradition

with its minstrels and ballad makers, the children of the gay science,

all the melodious vagabonds of Touraine, all the errant songsters who,

with the beggar's wallet and the trouvere's harp slung at their backs,

traversed, singing as they went, the plains of the beautiful land where

the eglantine of Clemence Isaure flourished.

At the transitional period between the days of chivalry and the dawn of

the Renaissance, Bohemia continued to stroll along all the highways of

the kingdom, and already to some extent about the streets of Paris.

There is Master Pierre Gringoire, friend of the vagrants and foe to

fasting. Lean and famished as a man whose very existence is one long

Lent, he lounges about the town, his nose in the air like a pointer's,

sniffing the odor from kitchen and cook shop. His eyes glittering

with covetous gluttony cause the hams hung outside the pork

butcher's to shrink by merely looking at them, whilst he jingles in

imagination--alas! and not in his pockets--the ten crowns promised him

by the echevins in payment of the pious and devout fare he has composed

for the theater in the hall of the Palais de Justice. Beside the doleful

and melancholy figure of the lover of Esmeralda, the chronicles of

Bohemia can evoke a companion of less ascetic humor and more cheerful

face--Master François Villon, par excellence, is this latter, and one

whose poetry, full of imagination, is no doubt on account of those

presentiments which the ancients attributed to their fates, continually

marked by a singular foreboding of the gallows, on which the said Villon

one day nearly swung in a hempen collar for having looked too closely at

the color of the king's crowns. This same Villon, who more than once

outran the watch started in his pursuit, this noisy guest at the dens of

the Rue Pierre Lescot, this spunger at the court of the Duke of Egypt,

this Salvator Rosa of poesy, has strung together elegies the

heartbreaking sentiment and truthful accents of which move the most

pitiless and make them forget the ruffian, the vagabond and the

debauchee, before this muse drowned in her own tears.

Besides, amongst all those whose but little known work has only been

familiar to men for whom French literature does not begin the day when

"Malherbe came," François Villon has had the honor of being the most

pillaged, even by the big-wigs of modern Parnassus. They threw

themselves upon the poor man's field and coined glory from his humble

treasure. There are ballads scribbled under a penthouse at the street

corner on a cold day by the Bohemian rhapsodist, stanzas improvised in

the hovel in which the "belle qui fut haultmire" loosened her gilt

girdle to all comers, which now-a-days metamorphosed into dainty

gallantries scented with musk and amber, figure in the armorial bearing

enriched album of some aristocratic Chloris.

But behold the grand century of the Renaissance opens, Michaelangelo

ascends the scaffolds of the Sistine Chapel and watches with anxious air

young Raphael mounting the steps of the Vatican with the cartoon of the

Loggie under his arm. Benvenuto Cellini is meditating his Perseus,

Ghiberti is carving the Baptistery doors at the same time that Donatello

is rearing his marbles on the bridges of the Arno; and whilst the city

of the Medici is staking masterpieces against that of Leo X and

Julius II, Titian and Paul Veronese are rendering the home of Doges

illustrious. Saint Mark's competes with Saint Peter's.

This fever of genius that had broken out suddenly in the Italian

peninsula with epidemic violence spreads its glorious contagion

throughout Europe. Art, the rival of God, strides on, the equal of

kings. Charles V stoops to pick up Titian's brush, and Francis I dances

attendance at the printing office where Etienne Dolet is perhaps

correcting the proofs of "Pantagruel."

Amidst this resurrection of intelligence, Bohemia continued as in the

past to seek, according to Balzac's expression, a bone and a kennel.

Clement Marot, the familiar of the ante-chamber of the Louvre, became,

even before she was a monarch's mistress, the favorite of that fair

Diana, whose smile lit up three reigns. From the boudoir of Diane de

Poitiers, the faithless muse of the poet passed to that of Marguerite de

Valois, a dangerous favor that Marot paid for by imprisonment. Almost

at the same epoch another Bohemian, whose childhood on the shores of

Sorrento had been caressed by the kisses of an epic muse, Tasso, entered

the court of the Duke of Ferrara as Marot had that of Francis I. But

less fortunate than the lover of Diane and Marguerite, the author of

"Jerusalem Delivered" paid with his reason and the loss of his genius

the audacity of his love for a daughter of the house of Este.

The religious contests and political storms that marked the arrival of

Medicis in France did not check the soaring flight of art. At the moment

when a ball struck on the scaffold of the Fontaine des Innocents Jean

Goujon who had found the Pagan chisel of Phidias, Ronsard discovered the

lyre of Pindar and founded, aided by his pleiad, the great French lyric

school. To this school succeeded the reaction of Malherbe and his

fellows, who sought to drive from the French tongue all the exotic

graces that their predecessors had tried to nationalize on Parnassus. It

was a Bohemian, Mathurin Regnier, who was one of the last defenders of

the bulwarks of poetry, assailed by the phalanx of rhetoricians and

grammarians who declared Rabelais barbarous and Montaigne obscure. It

was this same cynic, Mathurin Regnier, who, adding fresh knots to the

satiric whip of Horace, exclaimed, in indignation at the manners of his

day, "Honor is an old saint past praying to."

The roll call of Bohemia during the seventeenth century contains a

portion of the names belonging to the literature of the reigns of Louis

XIII and Louis XIV, it reckons members amongst the wits of the Hôtel

Rambouillet, where it takes its share in the production of the

"Guirlande de Julie," it has its entries into the Palais Cardinal, where

it collaborates, in the tragedy of "Marianne," with the poet-minister

who was the Robespierre of the monarchy. It bestrews the couch of Marion

Delorme with madrigals, and woos Ninon de l'Enclos beneath the trees of

the Place Royal; it breakfasts in the morning at the tavern of the

Goinfres or the Epee Royale, and sups in the evening at the table of the

Duc de Joyeuse; it fights duels under a street lamp for the sonnet of

Urania against the sonnet of Job. Bohemia makes love, war, and even

diplomacy, and in its old days, weary of adventures, it turns the Old

and New Testament into poetry, figures on the list of benefices, and

well nourished with fat prebendaryships, seats itself on an episcopal

throne, or a chair of the Academy, founded by one of its children.

It was in the transition period between the sixteenth and eighteenth

centuries that appeared those two lofty geniuses, whom each of the

nations amongst which they lived opposed to one another in their

struggles of literary rivalry. Moliere and Shakespeare, those

illustrious Bohemians, whose fate was too nearly akin.

The most celebrated names of the literature of the eighteenth century

are also to be found in the archives of Bohemia, which, amongst the

glorious ones of this epoch, can cite Jean Jacques Rousseau and

d'Alembert, the foundling of the porch of Notre Dame, and amongst the

obscure, Malfilâtre and Gilbert, two overrated reputations, for the

inspiration of the one was but a faint reflection of the weak lyricism

of Jean Baptiste Rousseau, and the inspiration of the other but the

blending of proud impotence with a hatred which had not even the excuse

of initiative and sincerity, since it was only the paid instrument of

party rancour.

We close with this epoch this brief summary of Bohemia in different

ages, a prolegomena besprinkled with illustrious names that we have

purposely placed at the beginning of this work, to put the reader on his

guard against any misapplication he might fall into on encountering the

title of Bohemians; long bestowed upon classes from which those whose

manners and language we have striven to depict hold it an honor to

differ.

Today, as of old, every man who enters on an artistic career, without

any other means of livelihood than his art itself, will be forced to

walk in the paths of Bohemia. The greater number of our contemporaries

who display the noblest blazonry of art have been Bohemians, and amidst

their calm and prosperous glory they often recall, perhaps with regret,

the time when, climbing the verdant slope of youth, they had no other

fortune in the sunshine of their twenty years than courage, which is the

virtue of the young, and hope, which is the wealth of the poor.

For the uneasy reader, for the timorous citizen, for all those for whom

an "i" can never be too plainly dotted in definition, we repeat as an

axiom: "Bohemia is a stage in artistic life; it is the preface to the

Academy, the Hôtel Dieu, or the Morgue."

We will add that Bohemia only exists and is only possible in Paris.

We will begin with unknown Bohemians, the largest class. It is made up

of the great family of poor artists, fatally condemned to the law of

incognito, because they cannot or do not know how to obtain a scrap of

publicity, to attest their existence in art, and by showing what they

are already prove what they may some day become. They are the race of

obstinate dreamers for whom art has remained a faith and not a

profession; enthusiastic folk of strong convictions, whom the sight of a

masterpiece is enough to throw into a fever, and whose loyal heart beats

high in presence of all that is beautiful, without asking the name of

the master and the school. This Bohemian is recruited from amongst those

young fellows of whom it is said that they give great hopes, and from

amongst those who realize the hopes given, but who, from carelessness,

timidity, or ignorance of practical life, imagine that everything is

done that can be when the work is completed, and wait for public

admiration and fortune to break in on them by escalade and burglary.

They live, so to say, on the outskirts of life, in isolation and

inertia. Petrified in art, they accept to the very letter the symbolism

of the academical dithyrambic, which places an aureola about the heads

of poets, and, persuaded that they are gleaming in their obscurity, wait

for others to come and seek them out. We used to know a small school

composed of men of this type, so strange, that one finds it hard to

believe in their existence; they styled themselves the disciples of art

for art's sake. According to these simpletons, art for art's sake

consisted of deifying one another, in abstaining from helping chance,

who did not even know their address, and in waiting for pedestals to

come of their own accord and place themselves under them.

It is, as one sees, the ridiculousness of stoicism. Well, then we again

affirm, there exist in the heart of unknown Bohemia, similar beings

whose poverty excites a sympathetic pity which common sense obliges you

to go back on, for if you quietly remark to them that we live in the

nineteenth century, that the five-franc piece is the empress of

humanity, and that boots do not drop already blacked from heaven, they

turn their backs on you and call you a tradesman.

For the rest, they are logical in their mad heroism, they utter neither

cries nor complainings, and passively undergo the obscure and rigorous

fate they make for themselves. They die for the most part, decimated by

that disease to which science does not dare give its real name, want. If

they would, however, many could escape from this fatal _denouement_

which suddenly terminates their life at an age when ordinary life is

only beginning. It would suffice for that for them to make a few

concessions to the stern laws of necessity; for them to know how to

duplicate their being, to have within themselves two natures, the poet

ever dreaming on the lofty summits where the choir of inspired voices

are warbling, and the man, worker-out of his life, able to knead his

daily bread, but this duality which almost always exists among strongly

tempered natures, of whom it is one of the distinctive characteristics,

is not met with amongst the greater number of these young fellows, whom

pride, a bastard pride, has rendered invulnerable to all the advice of

reason. Thus they die young, leaving sometimes behind them a work which

the world admires later on and which it would no doubt have applauded

sooner if it had not remained invisible.

In artistic struggles it is almost the same as in war, the whole of the

glory acquired falls to the leaders; the army shares as its reward the

few lines in a dispatch. As to the soldiers struck down in battle, they

are buried where they fall, and one epitaph serves for twenty thousand

dead.

So, too, the crowd, which always has its eyes fixed on the rising sun,

never lowers its glance towards that underground world where the obscure

workers are struggling; their existence finishes unknown and without

sometimes even having had the consolation of smiling at an accomplished

task, they depart from this life, enwrapped in a shroud of indifference.

There exists in ignored Bohemia another fraction; it is composed of

young fellows who have been deceived, or have deceived themselves. They

mistake a fancy for a vocation, and impelled by a homicidal fatality,

they die, some the victims of a perpetual fit of pride, others

worshippers of a chimera.

The paths of art, so choked and so dangerous, are, despite encumberment

and obstacles, day by day more crowded, and consequently Bohemians were

never more numerous.

If one sought out all the causes that have led to this influx, one might

perhaps come across the following.

Many young fellows have taken the declamations made on the subject of

unfortunate poets and artists quite seriously. The names of Gilbert,

Malfilâtre, Chatterton, and Moreau have been too often, too imprudently,

and, above all, too uselessly uttered. The tomb of these unfortunates

has been converted into a pulpit, from whence has been preached the

martyrdom of art and poetry,

"Farewell mankind, ye stony-hearted host,

Flint-bosomed earth and sun with frozen ray,

From out amidst you, solitary ghost

I glide unseen away."

This despairing song of Victor Escousse, stifled by the pride which had

been implanted in him by a factitious triumph, was for a time the

"Marseillaise" of the volunteers of art who were bent on inscribing

their names on the martyrology of mediocrity.

For these funereal apotheoses, these encomiastic requiems, having all

the attraction of the abyss for weak minds and ambitious vanities, many

of these yielding to this attraction have thought that fatality was the

half of genius; many have dreamt of the hospital bed on which Gilbert

died, hoping that they would become poets, as he did a quarter of an

hour before dying, and believing that it was an obligatory stage in

order to arrive at glory.

Too much blame cannot be attached to these immortal falsehoods, these

deadly paradoxes, which turn aside from the path in which they might

have succeeded so many people who come to a wretched ending in a career

in which they incommode those to whom a true vocation only gives the

right of entering on it.

It is these dangerous preachings, this useless posthumous exaltations,

that have created the ridiculous race of the unappreciated, the whining

poets whose muse has always red eyes and ill-combed locks, and all the

mediocrities of impotence who, doomed to non-publication, call the muse

a harsh stepmother, and art an executioner.

All truly powerful minds have their word to say, and, indeed, utter it

sooner or later. Genius or talent are not unforeseen accidents in

humanity; they have a cause of existence, and for that reason cannot

always remain in obscurity, for, if the crowd does not come to seek

them, they know how to reach it. Genius is the sun, everyone sees it.

Talent is the diamond that may for a long time remain hidden in

obscurity, but which is always perceived by some one. It is, therefore,

wrong to be moved to pity over the lamentations and stock phrases of

that class of intruders and inutilities entered upon an artistic career

in which idleness, debauchery, and parasitism form the foundations of

manners.

Axiom, "Unknown Bohemianism is not a path, it is a blind alley."

Indeed, this life is something that does not lead to anything. It is a

stultified wretchedness, amidst which intelligence dies out like a lamp

in a place without air, in which the heart grows petrified in a fierce

misanthropy, and in which the best natures become the worst. If one has

the misfortune to remain too long and to advance too far in this blind

alley one can no longer get out, or one emerges by dangerous breaches

and only to fall into an adjacent Bohemia, the manners of which belong

to another jurisdiction than that of literary physiology.

We will also cite a singular variety of Bohemians who might be called

amateurs. They are not the least curious. They find in Bohemian life an

existence full of seductions, not to dine every day, to sleep in the

open air on wet nights, and to dress in nankeen in the month of December

seems to them the paradise of human felicity, and to enter it some

abandon the family home, and others the study which leads to an assured

result. They suddenly turn their backs upon an honorable future to seek

the adventure of a hazardous career. But as the most robust cannot stand

a mode of living that would render Hercules consumptive, they soon give

up the game, and, hastening back to the paternal roast joint, marry

their little cousins, set up as a notary in a town of thirty thousand

inhabitants, and by their fireside of an evening have the satisfaction

of relating their artistic misery with the magniloquence of a traveller

narrating a tiger hunt. Others persist and put their self-esteem in it,

but when once they have exhausted those resources of credit which a

young fellow with well-to-do relatives can always find, they are more

wretched than the real Bohemians, who, never having had any other

resources, have at least those of intelligence. We knew one of these

amateur Bohemians who, after having remained three years in Bohemia and

quarrelled with his family, died one morning, and was taken to the

common grave in a pauper's hearse. He had ten thousand francs a year.

It is needless to say that these Bohemians have nothing whatever in

common with art, and that they are the most obscure amongst the least

known of ignored Bohemia.

We now come to the real Bohemia, to that which forms, in part, the

subject of this book. Those who compose it are really amongst those

called by art, and have the chance of being also amongst its elect. This

Bohemia, like the others, bristles with perils, two abysses flank it on

either side--poverty and doubt. But between these two gulfs there is at

least a road leading to a goal which the Bohemians can see with their

eyes, pending the time when they shall touch it with their hand.

It is official Bohemia so-called because those who form part of it have

publicly proved their existence, have signalised their presence in the

world elsewhere than on a census list, have, to employ one of their own

expressions, "their name in the bill," who are known in the literary and

artistic market, and whose products, bearing their stamp, are current

there, at moderate rates it is true.

To arrive at their goal, which is a settled one, all roads serve, and

the Bohemians know how to profit by even the accidents of the route.

Rain or dust, cloud or sunshine, nothing checks these bold adventurers,

whose sins are backed by virtue. Their mind is kept ever on the alert by

their ambition, which sounds a charge in front and urges them to the

assault of the future; incessantly at war with necessity, their

invention always marching with lighted match blows up the obstacle

almost before it incommodes them. Their daily existence is a work of

genius, a daily problem which they always succeed in solving by the aid

of audacious mathematics. They would have forced Harpagon to lend them

money, and have found truffles on the raft of the "Medusa." At need,

too, they know how to practice abstinence with all the virtue of an

anchorite, but if a slice of fortune falls into their hands you will see

them at once mounted on the most ruinous fancies, loving the youngest

and prettiest, drinking the oldest and best, and never finding

sufficient windows to throw their money out of. Then, when their last

crown is dead and buried, they begin to dine again at that table spread

by chance, at which their place is always laid, and, preceded by a pack

of tricks, go poaching on all the callings that have any connection with

art, hunting from morn till night that wild beast called a five-franc

piece.

The Bohemians know everything and go everywhere, according as they have

patent leather pumps or burst boots. They are to be met one day leaning

against the mantel-shelf in a fashionable drawing room, and the next

seated in the arbor of some suburban dancing place. They cannot take ten

steps on the Boulevard without meeting a friend, and thirty, no matter

where, without encountering a creditor.

Bohemians speak amongst themselves a special language borrowed from the

conversation of the studios, the jargon of behind the scenes, and the

discussions of the editor's room. All the eclecticisms of style are met

with in this unheard of idiom, in which apocalyptic phrases jostle cock

and bull stories, in which the rusticity of a popular saying is wedded

to extravagant periods from the same mold in which Cyrano de Bergerac

cast his tirades; in which the paradox, that spoilt child of modern

literature, treats reason as the pantaloon is treated in a pantomime; in

which irony has the intensity of the strongest acids and the skill of

those marksmen who can hit the bull's-eye blindfold; a slang

intelligent, though unintelligible to those who have not its key, and

the audacity of which surpasses that of the freest tongues. This

Bohemian vocabulary is the hell of rhetoric and the paradise of

neologism.

Such is in brief that Bohemian life, badly known to the puritans of

society, decried by the puritans of art, insulted by all the timorous

and jealous mediocrities who cannot find enough of outcries, lies, and

calumnies to drown the voices and the names of those who arrive through

the vestibule to renown by harnessing audacity to their talent.

A life of patience, of courage, in which one cannot fight unless clad in

a strong armour of indifference impervious to the attacks of fools and

the envious, in which one must not, if one would not stumble on the

road, quit for a single moment that pride in oneself which serves as a

leaning staff; a charming and a terrible life, which has conquerors and

its martyrs, and on which one should not enter save in resigning oneself

in advance to submit to the pitiless law _væ victis_.

H. M.

CHAPTER I

HOW THE BOHEMIAN CLUB WAS FORMED

One morning--it was the eighth of April--Alexander Schaunard, who

cultivated the two liberal arts of painting and music, was rudely

awakened by the peal of a neighbouring cock, which served him for an

alarm.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Schaunard, "my feathered clock goes too fast: it

cannot possibly be today yet!" So saying, he leaped precipitately out of

a piece of furniture of his own ingenious contrivance, which, sustaining

the part of bed by night, (sustaining it badly enough too,) did duty by

day for all the rest of the furniture which was absent by reason of the

severe cold for which the past winter had been noted.

To protect himself against the biting north-wind, Schaunard slipped on

in haste a pink satin petticoat with spangled stars, which served him

for dressing-gown. This gay garment had been left at the artist's

lodging, one masked-ball night, by a _folie_, who was fool enough to let

herself be entrapped by the deceitful promises of Schaunard when,

disguised as a marquis, he rattled in his pocket a seducingly sonorous

dozen of crowns--theatrical money punched out of a lead plate and

borrowed of a property-man. Having thus made his home toilette, the

artist proceeded to open his blind and window. A solar ray, like an

arrow of light, flashed suddenly into the room, and compelled him to

open his eyes that were still veiled by the mists of sleep. At the same

moment the clock of a neighbouring church struck five.

"It is the Morn herself!" muttered Schaunard; "astonishing, but"--and he

consulted an almanac nailed to the wall--"not the less a mistake. The

results of science affirm that at this season of the year the sun ought

not to rise till half-past five: it is only five o'clock, and there he

is! A culpable excess of zeal! The luminary is wrong; I shall have to

make a complaint to the longitude-office. However, I must begin to be a

little anxious. Today is the day after yesterday, certainly; and since

yesterday was the seventh, unless old Saturn goes backward, it must be

the eighth of April today. And if I may believe this paper," continued

Schaunard, going to read an official notice-to-quit posted on the wall,

"today, therefore, at twelve precisely, I ought to have evacuated the

premises, and paid into the hands of my landlord, Monsieur Bernard, the

sum of seventy-five francs for three quarters' rent due, which he

demands of me in very bad handwriting. I had hoped--as I always do--that

Providence would take the responsibility of discharging this debt, but

it seems it hasn't had time. Well, I have six hours before me yet. By

making good use of them, perhaps--to work! to work!"

He was preparing to put on an overcoat, originally of a long-haired,

woolly fabric, but now completely bald from age, when suddenly, as if

bitten by a tarantula, he began to execute around the room a polka of

his own composition, which at the public balls had often caused him to

be honoured with the particular attention of the police.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "it is surprising how the morning air gives one

ideas! It strikes me that I am on the scent of my air; Let's see." And,

half-dressed as he was, Schaunard seated himself at his piano. After

having waked the sleeping instrument by a terrific hurly-burly of notes,

he began, talking to himself all the while, to hunt over the keys for

the tune he had long been seeking.

"Do, sol, mi, do la, si, do re. Bah! it's as false as Judas, that re!"

and he struck violently on the doubtful note. "We must represent

adroitly the grief of a young person picking to pieces a white daisy

over a blue lake. There's an idea that's not in its infancy! However,

since it is fashion, and you couldn't find a music publisher who would

dare to publish a ballad without a blue lake in it, we must go with the

fashion. Do, sol, mi, do, la, si, do, re! That's not so bad; it gives a

fair idea of a daisy, especially to people well up in botany. La, si,

do, re. Confound that re! Now to make the blue lake intelligible. We

should have something moist, azure, moonlight--for the moon comes in too;

here it is; don't let's forget the swan. Fa, mi, la, sol," continued

Schaunard, rattling over the keys. "Lastly, an adieu of the young girl,

who determines to throw herself into the blue lake, to rejoin her

beloved who is buried under the snow. The catastrophe is not very

perspicuous, but decidedly interesting. We must have something tender,

melancholy. It's coming, it's coming! Here are a dozen bars crying like

Magdalens, enough to split one's heart--Brr, brr!" and Schaunard shivered

in his spangled petticoat, "if it could only split one's wood! There's a

beam in my alcove which bothers me a good deal when I have company at

dinner. I should like to make a fire with it--la, la, re, mi--for I feel

my inspiration coming to me through the medium of a cold in the head. So

much the worse, but it can't be helped. Let us continue to drown our

young girl;" and while his fingers assailed the trembling keys,

Schaunard, with sparkling eyes and straining ears, gave chase to the

melody which, like an impalpable sylph, hovered amid the sonorous mist

which the vibrations of the instrument seemed to let loose in the room.

"Now let us see," he continued, "how my music will fit into my poet's

words;" and he hummed, in voice the reverse of agreeable, this fragment

of verse of the patent comic-opera sort:

"The fair and youthful maiden,

As she flung her mantle by,

Threw a glance with sorrow laden

Up to the starry sky

And in the azure waters

Of the silver-waved lake."

"How is that?" he exclaimed, in transports of just indignation; "the

azure waters of a silver lake! I didn't see that. This poet is an idiot.

I'll bet he never saw a lake, or silver either. A stupid ballad too, in

every way; the length of the lines cramps the music. For the future I

shall compose my verses myself; and without waiting, since I feel in the

humour, I shall manufacture some couplets to adapt my melody to."

So saying, and taking his head between his hands, he assumed the grave

attitude of a man who is having relations with the Muses. After a few

minutes of this sacred intercourse, he had produced one of those strings

of nonsense-verses which the libretti-makers call, not without reason,

monsters, and which they improvise very readily as a ground-work for the

composer's inspiration. Only Schaunard's were no nonsense-verses, but

very good sense, expressing with sufficient clearness the inquietude

awakened in his mind by the rude arrival of that date, the eighth of

April.

Thus they ran:

"Eight and eight make sixteen just,

Put down six and carry one:

My poor soul would be at rest

Could I only find some one,

Some honest poor relation,

Who'd eight hundred francs advance,

To pay each obligation,

Whenever I've a chance."

Chorus

"And ere the clock on the last and fatal morning

Should sound mid-day,

To old Bernard, like a man who needs no warning,

To old Bernard, like a man who needs no warning,

To old Bernard, like a man who needs no warning,

My rent I'd pay!"

"The duece!" exclaimed Schaunard, reading over his composition, "one and

some one--those rhymes are poor enough, but I have no time to make them

richer. Now let us try how the notes will unite with the syllables." And

in his peculiarly frightful nasal tone he recommenced the execution of

his ballad. Satisfied with the result he had just obtained, Schaunard

congratulated himself with an exultant grimace, which mounted over his

nose like a circumflex accent whenever he had occasion to be pleased

with himself. But this triumphant happiness was destined to have no long

duration. Eleven o'clock resounded from the neighbouring steeple. Every

stroke diffused itself through the room in mocking sounds which seemed

to say to the unlucky Schaunard, "Are you ready?"

The artist bounded on his chair. "The time flies like a bird!" he

exclaimed. "I have but three-quarters of an hour left to find my

seventy-five francs and my new lodging. I shall never get them; that

would be too much like magic. Let me see: I give myself five minutes to

find out how to obtain them;" and burying his head between his knees, he

descended into the depths of reflection.

The five minutes elapsed, and Schaunard raised his head without having

found anything which resembled seventy-five francs.

"Decidedly, I have but one way of getting out of this, which is simply

to go away. It is fine weather and my friend Monsieur Chance may be

walking in the sun. He must give me hospitality till I have found the

means of squaring off with Monsieur Bernard."

Having stuffed into the cellar-like pockets of his overcoat all the

articles they would hold, Schaunard tied up some linen in a

handkerchief, and took an affectionate farewell of his home. While

crossing the court, he was suddenly stopped by the porter, who seemed to

be on the watch for him.

"Hallo! Monsieur Schaunard," cried he, blocking up the artist's way,

"don't you remember that this is the eighth of April?"

"Eight and eight make sixteen just,

Put down six and carry one,"

hummed Schaunard. "I don't remember anything else."

"You are a little behindhand then with your moving," said the porter;

"it is half-past eleven, and the new tenant to whom your room has been

let may come any minute. You must make haste."

"Let me pass, then," replied Schaunard; "I am going after a cart."

"No doubt, but before moving there is a little formality to be gone

through. I have orders not to let you take away a hair unless you pay

the three quarters due. Are you ready?"

"Why, of course," said Schaunard, making a step forward.

"Well come into my lodge then, and I will give you your receipt."

"I shall take it when I come back."

"But why not at once?" persisted the porter.

"I am going to a money changer's. I have no change."

"Ah, you are going to get change!" replied the other, not at all at his

ease. "Then I will take care of that little parcel under your arm, which

might be in your way."

"Monsieur Porter," exclaimed the artist, with a dignified air, "you

mistrust me, perhaps! Do you think I am carrying away my furniture in a

handkerchief?"

"Excuse me," answered the porter, dropping his tone a little, "but such

are my orders. Monsieur Bernard has expressly charged me not to let you

take away a hair before you have paid."

"But look, will you?" said Schaunard, opening his bundle, "these are not

hairs, they are shirts, and I am taking them to my washerwoman, who

lives next door to the money changer's twenty steps off."

"That alters the case," said the porter, after he had examined the

contents of the bundle. "Would it be impolite, Monsieur Schaunard, to

inquire your new address?"

"Rue de Rivoli!" replied the artist, and having once got outside the

gate, he made off as fast as possible.

"Rue de Rivoli!" muttered the porter, scratching his nose, "it's very

odd they should have let him lodgings in the Rue de Rivoli, and never

come here to ask about him. Very odd, that. At any rate, he can't carry

off his furniture without paying. If only the new tenant don't come

moving in just as Monsieur Schaunard is moving out! That would make a

nice mess! Well, sure enough," he exclaimed, suddenly putting his head

out of his little window, "here he comes, the new tenant!"

In fact, a young man in a white hat, followed by a porter who did not

seem over-burdened by the weight of his load, had just entered the

court. "Is my room ready?" he demanded of the house-porter, who had

stepped out to meet him.

"Not yet, sir, but it will be in a moment. The person who occupies it

has gone after a cart for his things. Meanwhile, sir, you may put your

furniture in the court."

"I am afraid it's going to rain," replied the young man, chewing a

bouquet of violets which he held in his mouth, "My furniture might be

spoiled. My friend," continued he, turning to the man who was behind

him, with something on a trunk which the porter could not exactly make

out, "put that down and go back to my old lodging to fetch the remaining

valuables."

The man ranged along the wall several frames six or seven feet high,

folded together, and apparently being capable of being extended.

"Look here," said the new-comer to his follower, half opening one of the

screens and showing him a rent in the canvas, "what an accident! You

have cracked my grand Venetian glass. Take more care on your second

trip, especially with my library."

"What does he mean by his Venetian glass?" muttered the porter, walking

up and down with an uneasy air before the frames ranged against the

wall. "I don't see any glass. Some joke, no doubt. I only see a screen.

We shall see, at any rate, what he will bring next trip."

"Is your tenant not going to make room for me soon?" inquired the young

man, "it is half-past twelve, and I want to move in."

"He won't be much longer," answered the porter, "but there is no harm

done yet, since your furniture has not come," added he, with a stress on

the concluding words.

As the young man was about to reply, a dragoon entered the court.

"Is this Monsieur Bernard's?" he asked, drawing a letter from a huge

leather portfolio which swung at his side.

"He lives here," replied the porter.

"Here is a letter for him," said the dragoon; "give me a receipt," and

he handed to the porter a bulletin of despatches which the latter

entered his lodge to sign.

"Excuse me for leaving you alone," said he to the young man who was

stalking impatiently about the court, "but this is a letter from the

Minister to my landlord, and I am going to take it up to him."

Monsieur Bernard was just beginning to shave when the porter knocked at

his door.

"What do you want, Durand?"

"Sir," replied the other, lifting his cap, "a soldier has just brought

this for you. It comes from the Ministry." And he handed to Monsieur

Bernard the letter, the envelope of which bore the stamp of the War

Department.

"Heavens!" exclaimed Monsieur Bernard, in such agitation that he all but

cut himself. "From the Minister of War! I am sure it is my nomination as

Knight of the Legion of Honour, which I have long solicited. At last

they have done justice to my good conduct. Here, Durand," said he,

fumbling in his waistcoat-pocket, "here are five francs to drink to my

health. Stay! I haven't my purse about me. Wait, and I will give you the

money in a moment."

The porter was so overcome by this stunning fit of generosity, which was

not at all in accordance with his landlord's ordinary habits, that he

absolutely put on his cap again.

But Monsieur Bernard, who at any other time would have severely

reprimanded this infraction of the laws of social hierarchy, appeared

not to notice it. He put on his spectacles, broke the seal of the

envelope with the respectful anxiety of a vizier receiving a sultan's

firman, and began to read the dispatch. At the first line a frightful

grimace ploughed his fat, monk-like cheeks with crimson furrows, and his

little eyes flashed sparks that seemed ready to set fire to his bushy

wig. In fact, all his features were so turned upside-down that you would

have said his countenance had just suffered a shock of face-quake.

For these were the contents of the letter bearing the ministerial stamp,

brought by a dragoon--orderly, and for which Durand had given the

government a receipt:

"Friend landlord: Politeness-who, according to ancient mythology,

is the grandmother of good manners--compels me to inform you that I

am under the cruel necessity of not conforming to the prevalent

custom of paying rent--prevalent especially when the rent is due. Up

to this morning I had cherished the hope of being able to celebrate

this fair day by the payments of my three quarters. Vain chimera,

bitter illusion! While I was slumbering on the pillow of

confidence, ill-luck--what the Greeks call _ananke_--was scattering

my hopes. The returns on which I counted--times are so bad!-have

failed, and of the considerable sums which I was to receive I have

only realised three francs, which were lent me, and I will not

insult you by the offer of them. Better days will come for our dear

country and for me. Doubt it not, sir! When they come, I shall fly

to inform you of their arrival, and to withdraw from your lodgings

the precious objects which I leave there, putting them under your

protection and that of the law, which hinders you from selling them

before the expiration of a year, in case you should be disposed to

try to do so with the object of obtaining the sum for which you

stand credited in the ledger of my honesty. I commend to your

special care my piano, and also the large frame containing sixty

locks of hair whose different colours run through the whole gamut

of capillary shades; the scissors of love have stolen them from the

forehead of the Graces."

"Therefore, dear sir, and landlord, you may dispose of the roof

under which I have dwelt. I grant you full authority, and have

hereto set my hand and seal."

"ALEXANDER SCHAUNARD"

On finishing this letter, (which the artist had written at the desk of a

friend who was a clerk in the War Office,) Monsieur Bernard indignantly

crushed it in his hand, and as his glance fell on old Durand, who was

waiting for the promised gratification, he roughly demanded what he was

doing.

"Waiting, sir."

"For what?"

"For the present, on account of the good news," stammered the porter.

"Get out, you scoundrel! Do you presume to speak to me with your cap

on?"

"But, sir--"

"Don't you answer me! Get out! No, stay there! We shall go up to the

room of that scamp of an artist who has run off without paying."

"What! Monsieur Schaunard?" ejaculated the porter.

"Yes," cried the landlord with increasing fury, "and if he has carried

away the smallest article, I send you off, straight off!"

"But it can't be," murmured the poor porter, "Monsieur Schaunard has not

run away. He has gone to get change to pay you, and order a cart for his

furniture."

"A cart for his furniture!" exclaimed the other, "run! I'm sure he has

it here. He laid a trap to get you away from your lodge, fool that you

are!"

"Fool that I am! Heaven help me!" cried the porter, all in a tremble

before the thundering wrath of his superior, who hurried him down the

stairs. When they arrived in the court the porter was hailed by the

young man in the white hat.

"Come now! Am I not soon going to be in possession of my lodging? Is

this the eighth of April? Did I hire a room here and pay you a deposit

to bind the bargain? Yes or no?"

"Excuse me, sir," interposed the landlord, "I am at your service.

Durand, I will talk to the gentleman myself. Run up there, that scamp

Schaunard has come back to pack up. If you find him, shut him in, and

then come down again and run for the police."

Old Durand vanished up the staircase.

"Excuse me, sir," continued the landlord, with a bow to the young man

now left alone with him, "to whom have I the honour of speaking?"

"Your new tenant. I have hired a room in the sixth story of this house,

and am beginning to be tired of waiting for my lodging to become

vacant."

"I am very sorry indeed," replied Monsieur Bernard, "there has been a

little difficulty with one of my tenants, the one whom you are to

replace."

"Sir," cried old Durand from a window at the very top of the house,

"Monsieur Schaunard is not here, but his room--stupid!--I mean he has

carried nothing away, not a hair, sir!"

"Very well, come down," replied the landlord. "Have a little patience, I

beg of you," he continued to the young man. "My porter will bring down

to the cellar the furniture in the room of my defaulting tenant, and you

may take possession in half an hour. Beside, your furniture has not come

yet."

"But it has," answered the young man quietly.

Monsieur Bernard looked around, and saw only the large screens which had

already mystified his porter.

"How is this?" he muttered. "I don't see anything."

"Behold!" replied the youth, unfolding the leaves of the frame, and

displaying to the view of the astonished landlord a magnificent interior

of a palace, with jasper columns, bas-reliefs, and paintings of old

masters.

"But your furniture?" demanded Monsieur Bernard.

"Here it is," replied the young man, pointing to the splendid furniture

_painted_ in the palace, which he had bought at a sale of second-hand

theatrical decorations.

"I hope you have some more serious furniture than this," said the

landlord. "You know I must have security for my rent."

"The deuce! Is a palace not sufficient security for the rent of a

garret?"

"No sir, I want real chairs and tables in solid mahogany."

"Alas! Neither gold nor mahogany makes us happy, as for the ancient poet

well says. And I can't bear mahogany; it's too common a wood. Everybody

has it."

"But surely sir, you must have some sort of furniture."

"No, it takes up too much room. You are stuck full of chairs, and have

no place to sit down."

"But at any rate, you have a bed. What do you sleep on?"

"On a good conscience, sir."

"Excuse me, one more question," said the landlord, "What is your

profession?"

At this very moment the young man's porter, returning on his second

trip, entered the court. Among the articles with which his truck was

loaded, an easel occupied a conspicuous position.

"Sir! Sir!!" shrieked old Durance, pointing out the easel to his

landlord, "it's a painter!"

"I was sure he was an artist!" exclaimed the landlord in his turn, the

hair of his wig standing up in affright, "a painter!! And you never

inquired after this person," he continued to his porter, "you didn't

know what he did!"

"He gave me five francs _arrest_," answered the poor fellow, "how could

I suspect--"

"When you have finished," put in the stranger--

"Sir," replied Monsieur Bernard, mounting his spectacles with great

decision, "since you have no furniture, you can't come in. The law

authorizes me to refuse a tenant who brings no security."

"And my word, then?"

"Your word is not furniture, you must go somewhere else. Durance will

give you back your earnest money."

"Oh dear!" exclaimed the porter, in consternation, "I've put it in the

Savings' Bank."

"But consider sir," objected the young man. "I can't find another

lodging in a moment! At least grant me hospitality for a day."

"Go to a hotel!" replied Monsieur Bernard. "By the way," added he,

struck with a sudden idea, "if you like, I can let you a furnished room,

the one you were to occupy, which has the furniture of my defaulting

tenant in it. Only you know that when rooms are let this way, you pay in

advance."

"Well," said the artist, finding he could do no better, "I should like

to know what you are going to ask me for your hole."

"It is a very comfortable lodging, and the rent will be twenty-five

francs a month, considering the circumstances, paid in advance."

"You have said that already, the expression does not deserve being

repeated," said the young man, feeling in his pocket. "Have you change

for five hundred francs?"

"I beg your pardon," quoth the astonished landlord.

"Five hundred, half a thousand; did you never see one before?"

continued the artist, shaking the bank-note in the faces of the landlord

and porter, who fairly lost their balance at the sight.

"You shall have it in a moment, sir," said the now respectful owner of

the house, "there will only be twenty francs to take out, for Durand

will return your deposit."

"He may keep it," replied the artist, "on condition of coming every

morning to tell me the day of the week and month, the quarter of the

moon, the weather it is going to be, and the form of government we are

under."

Old Durand described an angle of ninety degrees forward.

"Yes, my good fellow, you shall serve me for almanac. Meanwhile, help my

porter to bring the things in."

"I shall send you your receipt immediately," said the landlord, and that

very night the painter Marcel was installed in the lodging of the

fugitive Schaunard. During this time the aforesaid Schaunard was beating

his roll-call, as he styled it, through the city.

Schaunard had carried the art of borrowing to the perfection of a

science. Foreseeing the possible necessity of having to _spoil the

foreigners_, he had learned how to ask for five francs in every language

of the world. He had thoroughly studied all the stratagems which specie

employs to escape those who are hunting for it, and knew, better than a

pilot knows the hours of the tide, at what periods it was high or low

water; that is to say, on what days his friends and acquaintances were

accustomed to be in funds. Accordingly, there were houses where his

appearance of a morning made people say, not "Here is Monsieur

Schaunard," but "This is the first or the fifteenth." To facilitate, and

at the same time equalize this species of tax which he was going to

levy, when compelled by necessity, from those who were able to pay it to

him, Schaunard had drawn up by districts and streets an alphabetical

table containing the names of all his acquaintances. Opposite each name

was inscribed the maximum of the sum which the party's finances

authorized the artist to borrow of him, the time when he was flush, and

his dinner hour, as well as his usual bill of fare. Beside this table,

he kept a book, in perfect order, on which he entered the sums lent him,

down to the smallest fraction; for he would never burden himself beyond

a certain amount which was within the fortune of a country relative,

whose heir-apparent he was. As soon as he owed one person twenty francs,

he closed the account and paid him off, even if obliged to borrow for

the purpose of those to whom he owed less. In this way he always kept up

a certain credit which he called his floating debt, and as people knew

that he was accustomed to repay as soon as his means permitted him,

those who could accommodate him were very ready to do so.

But on the present occasion, from eleven in the morning, when he had

started to try and collect the seventy-five francs requisite, up to six

in the afternoon, he had only raised three francs, contributed by three

letters (M., V., and R.) of his famous list. All the rest of the

alphabet, having, like himself, their quarter to pay, had adjourned his

claim indefinitely.

The clock of his stomach sounded the dinner-hour. He was then at the

Maine barrier, where letter U lived. Schaunard mounted to letter U's

room, where he had a knife and fork, when there were such articles on

the premises.

"Where are you going, sir?" asked the porter, stopping him before he had

completed his ascent.

"To Monsieur U," replied the artist.

"He's out."

"And madame?"

"Out too. They told me to say to a friend who was coming to see them

this evening, that they were gone out to dine. In fact, if you are the

gentleman they expected, this is the address they left." It was a scrap

of paper on which his friend U. had written. "We are gone to dine with

Schaunard, No.__, Rue de__. Come for us there."

"Well," said he, going away, "accident does make queer farces

sometimes." Then remembering that there was a little tavern near by,

where he had more than once procured a meal at a not unreasonable rate,

he directed his steps to this establishment, situated in the adjoining

road, and known among the lowest class of artistdom as "Mother Cadet's."

It is a drinking-house which is also an eating-house, and its ordinary

customers are carters of the Orleans railway, singing-ladies of Mont

Parnasse, and juvenile "leads" from the Bobino theatre. During the warm

season the students of the numerous painters' studios which border on

the Luxembourg, the unappreciated and unedited men of the letters, the

writers of leaders in mysterious newspapers, throng to dine at "Mother

Cadet's," which is famous for its rabbit stew, its veritable sour-crout,

and a miled white wine which smacks of flint.

Schaunard sat down in the grove; for so at "Mother Cadet's" they called

the scattered foliage of two or three rickety trees whose sickly boughs

had been trained into a sort of arbor.

"Hang the expense!" said Schaunard to himself, "I have to have a good

blow-out, a regular Belthazzar's feast in private life," and without

more ado, he ordered a bowl of soup, half a plate of sour-crout, and two

half stews, having observed that you get more for two halves than one

whole one.

This extensive order attracted the attention of a young person in white

with a head-dress of orange flowers and ballshoes; a veil of _sham

imitation_ lace streamed down her shoulders, which she had no special

reason to be proud of. She was a _prima donna_ of the Mont Parnasse

theatre, the greenroom of which opens into Mother Cadet's kitchen; she

had come to take a meal between two acts of _Lucia_, and was at that

moment finishing with a small cup of coffee her dinner, composed

exclusively of an artichoke seasoned with oil and vinegar.

"Two stews! Duece take it!" said she, in an aside to the girl who acted

as waiter at the establishment. "That young man feeds himself well. How

much do I owe, Adele?"

"Artichoke four, coffee four, bread one, that makes nine sous."

"There they are," said the singer and off she went humming:

"This affection Heaven has given."

"Why she is giving us the la!" exclaimed a mysterious personage half

hidden behind a rampart of old books, who was seated at the same table

with Schaunard.

"Giving it!" replied the other, "keeping it, I should say. Just

imagine!" he added, pointing to the vinegar on the plate from which

Lucia had been eating her artichoke, "pickling that falsetto of hers!"

"It is a strong acid, to be sure," added the personage who had first

spoken. "They make some at Orleans which has deservedly a great

reputation."

Schaunard carefully examined this individual, who was thus fishing for a

conversation with him. The fixed stare of his large blue eyes, which

always seemed looking for something, gave his features the character of

happy tranquility which is common among theological students. His face

had a uniform tint of old ivory, except his cheeks, which had a coat, as

it were of brickdust. His mouth seemed to have been sketched by a

student in the rudiments of drawing, whose elbow had been jogged while

he was tracing it. His lips, which pouted almost like a negro's,

disclosed teeth not unlike a stag-hound's and his double-chin reposed

itself upon a white cravat, one of whose points threatened the stars,

while the other was ready to pierce the ground. A torrent of light hair

escaped from under the enormous brim of his well-worn felt-hat. He wore

a hazel-coloured overcoat with a large cape, worn thread-bare and rough

as a grater; from its yawning pockets peeped bundles of manuscripts and

pamphlets. The enjoyment of his sour-crout, which he devoured with

numerous and audible marks of approbation, rendered him heedless of the

scrutiny to which he was subjected, but did not prevent him from

continuing to read an old book open before him, in which he made

marginal notes from time to time with a pencil that he carried behind

his ear.

"Hullo!" cried Schaunard suddenly, making his glass ring with his knife,

"my stew!"

"Sir," said the girl, running up plate in hand, "there is none left,

here is the last, and this gentleman has ordered it." Therewith she

deposited the dish before the man with the books.

"The deuce!" cried Schaunard. There was such an air of melancholy

disappointment in his ejaculation, that the possessor of the books was

moved to the soul by it. He broke down the pile of old works which

formed a barrier between him and Schaunard, and putting the dish in the

centre of the table, said, in his sweetest tones:

"Might I be so bold as to beg you, sir, to share this with me?"

"Sir," replied the artist, "I could not think of depriving you of it."

"Then will you deprive me of the pleasure of being agreeable to you?"

"If you insist, sir," and Schaunard held out his plate.

"Permit me not to give you the head," said the stranger.

"Really sir, I cannot allow you," Schaunard began, but on taking back

his plate he perceived that the other had given him the very piece which

he implied he would keep for himself.

"What is he playing off his politeness on me for?" he muttered to

himself.

"If the head is the most noble part of man," said the stranger, "it is

the least agreeable part of the rabbit. There are many persons who

cannot bear it. I happen to like it very much, however."

"If so," said Schaunard, "I regret exceedingly that you robbed yourself

for me."

"How? Excuse me," quoth he of the books, "I kept the head, as I had the

honor of observing to you."

"Allow me," rejoined Schaunard, thrusting his plate under his nose,

"what part do you call that?"

"Good heavens!" cried the stranger, "what do I see? Another head? It is

a bicephalous rabbit!"

"Buy what?" said Schaunard.

"Cephalous--comes from the Greek. In fact, Baffon (who used to wear

ruffles) cites some cases of this monstrosity. On the whole, I am not

sorry to have eaten a phenomenon."

Thanks to this incident, the conversation was definitely established.

Schaunard, not willing to be behindhand in courtesy, called for an extra

quart of wine. The hero of the books called for a third. Schaunard

treated to salad, the other to dessert. At eight o'clock there were six

empty bottles on the table. As they talked, their natural frankness,

assisted by their libations, had urged them to interchange biographies,

and they knew each other as well as if they had always lived together.

He of the books, after hearing the confidential disclosures of

Schaunard, had informed him that his name was Gustave Colline; he was a

philosopher by profession, and got his living by giving lessons in

rhetoric, mathematics and several other _ics_.

What little money he picked up by his profession was spent in buying

books. His hazel-coloured coat was known to all the stall keepers on the

quay from the Pont de la Concorde to the Pont Saint Michel. What he did

with these books, so numerous that no man's lifetime would have been

long enough to read them, nobody knew, least of all, himself. But this

hobby of his amounted to monomania: when he came home at night without

bringing a musty quarto with him, he would repeat the saying of Titus,

"I have lost a day." His enticing manners, his language, which was a

mosaic of every possible style, and the fearful puns which embellished

his conversation, completely won Schaunard, who demanded on the spot

permission of Colline to add his name to those on the famous list

already mentioned.

They left Mother Cadet's at nine o'clock at night, both fairly primed,

and with the gait of men who have been engaged in close conversation

with sundry bottles.

Colline offered to stand coffee, and Schaunard accepted on condition

that he should be allowed to pay for the accompanying nips of liquor.

They turned into a cafe in the Rue Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, and

bearing on its sign the name of Momus, god of play and pleasure.

At the moment they entered a lively argument broke out between two of

the frequenters of the place. One of them was a young fellow whose face

was hidden by a dense thicket of beard of several distinct shades. By

way of a balance to this wealth of hair on his chin, a precocious

baldness had despoiled his forehead, which was as bare as a billiard

ball. He vainly strove to conceal the nakedness of the land by brushing

forward a tuft of hairs so scanty that they could almost be counted. He

wore a black coat worn at the elbows, and revealing whenever he raised

his arms too high a ventilator under the armpits. His trousers might

have once been black, but his boots, which had never been new, seemed to

have already gone round the world two or three times on the feet of the

Wandering Jew.

Schaunard noticed that his new friend Colline and the young fellow with

the big beard nodded to one another.

"You know the gentleman?" said he to the philosopher.

"Not exactly," replied the latter, "but I meet him sometimes at the

National Library. I believe that he is a literary man."

"He wears the garb of one, at any rate," said Schaunard.

The individual with whom this young fellow was arguing was a man of

forty, foredoomed, by a big head wedged between his shoulders without

any break in the shape of a neck, to the thunderstroke of apoplexy.

Idiocy was written in capital letters on his low forehead, surmounted by

a little black skull-cap. His name was Monsieur Mouton, and he was a

clerk at the town hall of the 4th Arrondissement, where he acted as

registrar of deaths.

"Monsieur Rodolphe," exclaimed he, in the squeaky tones of a eunuch,

shaking the young fellow by a button of his coat which he had laid hold

of. "Do you want to know my opinion? Well, all your newspapers are of no

use whatsoever. Come now, let us put a supposititious case. I am the

father of a family, am I not? Good. I go to the cafe for a game at

dominoes? Follow my argument now."

"Go on," said Rodolphe.

"Well," continued Daddy Mouton, punctuating each of his sentences by a

blow with his fist which made the jugs and glasses on the table rattle

again. "Well, I come across the papers. What do I see? One which says

black when the other says white, and so on and so on. What is all that

to me? I am the father of a family who goes to the cafe--"

"For a game at dominoes," said Rodolphe.

"Every evening," continued Monsieur Mouton. "Well, to put a case--you

understand?"

"Exactly," observed Rodolphe.

"I read an article which is not according to my views. That puts me in a

rage, and I fret my heart out, because you see, Monsieur Rodolphe,

newspapers are all lies. Yes, lies," he screeched in his shrillest

falsetto, "and the journalists are robbers."

"But, Monsieur Mouton--"

"Yes, brigands," continued the clerk. "They are the cause of all our

misfortunes; they brought about the Revolution and its paper money,

witness Murat."

"Excuse me," said Rodolphe, "you mean Marat."

"No, no," resumed Monsieur Mouton, "Murat, for I saw his funeral when I

was quite a child--"

"But I assure you--"

"They even brought you a piece at the Circus about him, so there."

"Exactly," said Rodolphe, "that was Murat."

"Well what else have I been saying for an hour past?" exclaimed the

obstinate Mouton. "Murat, who used to work in a cellar, eh? Well, to put

a case. Were not the Bourbons right to guillotine him, since he had

played the traitor?"

"Guillotine who? Play the traitor to whom?" cried Rodolphe,

button-holing Monsieur Mouton in turn.

"Why Marat."

"No, no, Monsieur Mouton. Murat, let us understand one another, hang it

all!"

"Precisely, Marat, a scoundrel. He betrayed the Emperor in 1815. That is

why I say all the papers are alike," continued Monsieur Mouton,

returning to the original theme of what he called an explanation. "Do

you know what I should like, Monsieur Rodolphe? Well, to put a case. I

should like a good paper. Ah! not too large and not stuffed with

phrases."

"You are exacting," interrupted Rodolphe, "a newspaper without phrases."

"Yes, certainly. Follow my idea?"

"I am trying to."

"A paper which should simply give the state of the King's health and of

the crops. For after all, what is the use of all your papers that no one

can understand? To put a case. I am at the town hall, am I not? I keep

my books; very good. Well, it is just as if someone came to me and said,

'Monsieur Mouton, you enter the deaths--well, do this, do that.' What do

you mean by this and that? Well, it is the same thing with newspapers,"

he wound up with.

"Evidently," said a neighbor who had understood.

And Monsieur Mouton having received the congratulations of some of the

other frequenters of the cafe who shared his opinion, resumed his game

at dominoes.

"I have taught him his place," said he, indicating Rodolphe, who had

returned to the same table at which Schaunard and Colline were seated.

"What a blockhead!" said Rodolphe to the two young fellows.

"He has a fine head, with his eyelids like the hood of a cabriolet, and

his eyes like glass marbles," said Schaunard, pulling out a wonderfully

coloured pipe.

"By Jupiter, sir," said Rodolphe, "that is a very pretty pipe of yours."

"Oh! I have a much finer one I wear in society," replied Schaunard,

carelessly, "pass me some tobacco, Colline."

"Hullo!" said the philosopher, "I have none left."

"Allow me to offer you some," observed Rodolphe, pulling a packet of

tobacco out of his pocket and placing it on the table.

To this civility Colline thought it his duty to respond by an offer of

glasses round.

Rodolphe accepted. The conversation turned on literature. Rodolphe,

questioned as to the profession already revealed by his garb, confessed

his relation with the Muses, and stood a second round of drinks. As the

waiter was going off with the bottle Schaunard requested him to be good

enough to forget it. He had heard the silvery tinkle of a couple of

five-franc pieces in one of Colline's pockets. Rodolphe had soon reached

the same level of expansiveness as the two friends, and poured out his

confidences in turn.

They would no doubt have passed the night at the cafe if they had not

been requested to leave. They had not gone ten steps, which had taken

them a quarter of an hour to accomplish, before they were surprised by a

violent downpour. Colline and Rodolphe lived at opposite ends of Paris,

one on the Ile Saint Louis, and the other at Montmartre.

Schaunard, who had wholly forgotten that he was without a residence,

offered them hospitality.

"Come to my place," said he, "I live close by, we will pass the night in

discussing literature and art."

"You shall play and Rodolphe will recite some of his verses to us," said

Colline.

"Right you are," said Schaunard, "life is short, and we must enjoy

ourselves whilst we can."

Arriving at the house, which Schaunard had some difficulty in

recognizing, he sat down for a moment on a corner-post waiting for

Rodolphe and Colline, who had gone into a wine-shop that was still open

to obtain the primary element of a supper. When they came back,

Schaunard rapped several times at the door, for he vaguely recollected

that the porter had a habit of keeping him waiting. The door at length

opened, and old Durand, half aroused from his first sleep, and no longer

recalling that Schaunard had ceased to be his tenant, did not disturb

himself when the latter called out his name to him.

When they had all three gained the top of the stairs, the ascent of

which had been as lengthy as it was difficult, Schaunard, who was the

foremost, uttered a cry of astonishment at finding the key in the

keyhole of his door.

"What is the matter?" asked Rodolphe.

"I cannot make it out," muttered the other. "I find the key in the door,

though I took it away with me this morning. Ah! we shall see. I put it

in my pocket. Why, confound it, here it is still!" he exclaimed,

displaying a key. "This is witchcraft."

"Phantasmagoria," said Colline.

"Fancy," added Rodolphe.

"But," resumed Schaunard, whose voice betrayed a commencement of alarm,

"do you hear that?"

"What?"

"What?"

"My piano, which is playing of its own accord _do la mi re do, la si sol

re._ Scoundrel of a re, it is still false."

"But it cannot be in your room," said Rodolphe, and he added in a

whisper to Colline, against whom he was leaning heavily, "he is tight."

"So I think. In the first place, it is not a piano at all, it is a

flute."

"But you are screwed too, my dear fellow," observed the poet to the

philosopher, who had sat down on the landing, "it is a violin."

"A vio--, pooh! I say, Schaunard," hiccupped Colline, pulling his friend

by the legs, "here is a joke, this gentleman makes out that it is a

vio--"

"Hang it all," exclaimed Schaunard in the height of terror, "it is

magic."

"Phantasma-goria," howled Colline, letting fall one of the bottles he

held by his hand.

"Fancy," yelled Rodolphe in turn.

In the midst of this uproar the room door suddenly opened, and an

individual holding a triple-branched candlestick in which pink candles

were burning, appeared on the threshold.

"What do you want, gentlemen?" asked he, bowing courteously to the three

friends.

"Good heavens, what am I about? I have made a mistake, this is not my

room," said Schaunard.

"Sir," added Colline and Rodolphe, simultaneously, addressing the person

who had opened the door, "be good enough to excuse our friend, he is as

drunk as three fiddlers."

Suddenly a gleam of lucidity flashed through Schaunard's intoxication,

he read on his door these words written in chalk:

"I have called three times for my New Year's gift--PHEMIE."

"But it is all right, it is all right, I am indeed at home," he

exclaimed, "here is the visiting card Phemie left me on New Year's Day;

it is really my door."

"Good heavens, sir," said Rodolphe, "I am truly bewildered."

"Believe me, sir," added Colline, "that for my part, I am an active

partner in my friend's confusion."

The young fellow who had opened the door could not help laughing.

"If you come into my room for a moment," he replied, "no doubt your

friend, as soon as he has looked around, will see his mistake."

"Willingly."

And the poet and philosopher each taking Schaunard by an arm, led him

into the room, or rather the palace of Marcel, whom no doubt our readers

have recognized.

Schaunard cast his eyes vaguely around him, murmuring, "It is

astonishing how my dwelling is embellished!"

"Well, are you satisfied now?" asked Colline.

But Schaunard having noticed the piano had gone to it, and was playing

scales.

"Here, you fellows, listen to this," said he, striking the notes, "this

is something like, the animal has recognized his master,_ si la sol, fa

mi re._ Ah! wretched re, you are always the same. I told you it was my

instrument."

"He insists on it," said Colline to Rodolphe.

"He insists on it," repeated Rodolphe to Marcel.

"And that," added Schaunard, pointing to the star-adorned petticoat that

was lying on a chair, "it is not an adornment of mine, perhaps? Ah!"

And he looked Marcel straight in the face.

"And this," continued he, unfastening from the wall the notice to quit

already spoken of.

And he began to read, "Therefore Monsieur Schaunard is hereby required

to give up possession of the said premises, and to leave them in

tenantable repair, before noon on the eighth day of April. As witness

the present formal notice to quit, the cost of which is five francs."

"Ha! ha! so I am not the Monsieur Schaunard to whom formal notice to

quit is given at a cost of five francs? And these, again," he continued,

recognizing his slippers on Marcel's feet, "are not those my papouches,

the gift of a beloved hand? It is your turn, sir," said he to Marcel,

"to explain your presence amongst my household goods."

"Gentlemen," replied Marcel, addressing himself more especially to

Colline and Rodolphe, "this gentleman," and he pointed to Schaunard, "is

at home, I admit."

"Ah!" exclaimed Schaunard, "that's lucky."

"But," continued Marcel, "I am at home too."

"But, sir," broke in Rodolphe, "if our friend recognizes--"

"Yes," said Colline, "if our friend--"

"And if on your side you recall that--," added Rodolphe, "how is it

that--"

"Yes," replied his echo Colline, "how is it that--"

"Have the kindness to sit down, gentlemen," replied Marcel, "and I will

explain the mystery to you."

"If we were to liquify the explanation?" risked Colline.

"Over a mouthful of something," added Rodolphe.

The four young fellows sat down to table and attacked a piece of cold

veal which the wine-shop keeper had let them have.

Marcel then explained what had taken place in the morning between

himself and the landlord when he had come to move in.

"Then," observed Rodolphe, "this gentleman is quite right, and we are in

his place?"

"You are at home," said Marcel politely.

But it was a tremendous task to make Schaunard understand what had taken

place. A comical incident served to further complicate the situation.

Schaunard, when looking for something in a sideboard, found the change

of the five hundred franc note that Marcel had handed to Monsieur

Bernard that morning.

"Ah! I was quite sure," he exclaimed, "that Fortune would not desert me.

I remember now that I went out this morning to run after her. On account

of its being quarter-day she must have looked in during my absence. We

crossed one another on the way, that it is. How right I was to leave the

key in my drawer!"

"Delightful madness!" murmured Rodolphe, looking at Schaunard, who was

building up the money in equal piles.

"A dream, a falsehood, such is life," added the philosopher.

Marcel laughed.

An hour later they had all four fallen asleep.

The next day they woke up at noon, and at first seemed very much

surprised to find themselves together. Schaunard, Colline, and Rodolphe

did not appear to recognize one another, and addressed one another as

"sir." Marcel had to remind them that they had come together the evening

before.

At that moment old Durand entered the room.

"Sir," said he to Marcel, "it is the month of April, eighteen hundred

and forty, there is mud in the streets, and His Majesty Louis-Philippe

is still King of France and Navarre. What!" exclaimed the porter on

seeing his former tenant, "Monsieur Schaunard, how did you come here?"

"By the telegraph," replied Schaunard.

"Ah!" replied the porter, "you are still a joker--"

"Durand," said Marcel, "I do not like subordinates mingling in

conversation with me, go to the nearest restaurant and have a breakfast

for four sent up. Here is the bill of fare," he added, handing him a

slip of paper on which he had written it. "Go."

"Gentlemen," continued Marcel, addressing the three young fellows, "you

invited me to supper last night, allow me to offer you a breakfast this

morning, not in my room, but in ours," he added, holding out his hand to

Schaunard.

"Oh! no," said Schaunard sentimentally, "let us never leave one

another."

"That's right, we are very comfortable here," added Colline.

"To leave you for a moment," continued Rodolphe. "Tomorrow the 'Scarf of

Iris,' a fashion paper of which I am editor, appears, and I must go and

correct my proofs; I will be back in an hour."

"The deuce!" said Colline, "that reminds me that I have a lesson to give

to an Indian prince who has come to Paris to learn Arabic."

"Go tomorrow," said Marcel.

"Oh, no!" said the philosopher, "the prince is to pay me today. And then

I must acknowledge to you that this auspicious day would be spoilt for

me if I did not take a stroll amongst the bookstalls."

"But will you come back?" said Schaunard.

"With the swiftness of an arrow launched by a steady hand," replied the

philosopher, who loved eccentric imagery.

And he went out with Rodolphe.

"In point of fact," said Schaunard when left alone with Marcel, "instead

of lolling on the sybarite's pillow, suppose I was to go out to seek

some gold to appease the cupidity of Monsieur Bernard?"

"Then," said Marcel uneasily, "you still mean to move?"

"Hang it," replied Schaunard, "I must, since I have received a formal

notice to quit, at a cost of five francs."

"But," said Marcel, "if you move, shall you take your furniture with

you?"

"I have that idea. I will not leave a hair, as Monsieur Bernard says."

"The deuce! That will be very awkward for me," said Marcel, "since I

have hired your room furnished."

"There now, that's so," replied Schaunard. "Ah! bah," he added in a

melancholy tone, "there is nothing to prove that I shall find my

thousand francs today, tomorrow, or even later on."

"Stop a bit," exclaimed Marcel, "I have an idea."

"Unfold it."

"This is the state of things. Legally, this lodging is mine, since I

have paid a month in advance."

"The lodging, yes, but as to the furniture, if I pay, I can legally take

it away, and if it were possible I would even take it away illegally."

"So that," continued Marcel, "you have furniture and no lodging, and I

have lodging and no furniture."

"That is the position," observed Schaunard.

"This lodging suits me," said Marcel.

"And for my part is has never suited me better," said Schaunard.

"Well then, we can settle this business," resumed Marcel, "stay with me,

I will apply house-room, and you shall supply the furniture."

"And the rent?" said Schaunard.

"Since I have some money just now I will pay it, it will be your turn

next time. Think about it."

"I never think about anything, above all accepting a suggestion which

suits me. Carried unanimously, in point of fact, Painting and Music are

sisters."

"Sisters-in-law," observed Marcel.

At that moment Colline and Rodolphe, who had met one another, came in.

Marcel and Schaunard informed them of their partnership.

"Gentlemen," said Rodolphe, tapping his waistcoat pocket, "I am ready to

stand dinner all round."

"That is just what I was going to have the honour of proposing," said

Colline, taking out a gold coin which he stuck in his eye like a glass.

"My prince gave me this to buy an Arabic grammar, which I have just paid

six sous ready cash for."

"I," said Rodolphe, "have got the cashier of the 'Scarf of Iris' to

advance me thirty francs under the pretext that I wanted it to get

vaccinated."

"It is general pay-day then?" said Schaunard, "there is only myself

unable to stand anything. It is humiliating."

"Meanwhile," said Rodolphe, "I maintain my offer of a dinner."

"So do I," said Colline.

"Very well," said Rodolphe, "we will toss up which shall settle the

bill."

"No," said Schaunard, "I have something far better than that to offer

you as a way of getting over the difficulty."

"Let us have it."

"Rodolphe shall pay for dinner, and Colline shall stand supper."

"That is what I call Solomonic jurisprudence," exclaimed the

philosopher.

"It is worse than Camacho's wedding," added Marcel.

The dinner took place at a Provencal restaurant in the Rue Dauphine,

celebrated for its literary waiters and its "Ayoli." As it was necessary

to leave room for the supper, they ate and drank in moderation. The

acquaintance, begun the evening before between Colline and Schaunard and

later on with Marcel, became more intimate; each of the young fellows

hoisted the flag of his artistic opinions, and all four recognized that

they had like courage and similar hopes. Talking and arguing they

perceived that their sympathies were akin, that they had all the same

knack in that chaff which amuses without hurting, and that the virtues

of youth had not left a vacant spot in their heart, easily stirred by

the sight of the narration of anything noble. All four starting from the

same mark to reach the same goal, they thought that there was something

more than chance in their meeting, and that it might after all be

Providence who thus joined their hands and whispered in their ears the

evangelic motto, which should be the sole charter of humanity, "Love one

another."

At the end of the repast, which closed in somewhat grave mood, Rodolphe

rose to propose a toast to the future, and Colline replied in a short

speech that was not taken from any book, had no pretension to style,

and was merely couched in the good old dialect of simplicity, making

that which is so badly delivered so well understood.

"What a donkey this philosopher is!" murmured Schaunard, whose face was

buried in his glass, "here is he obliging me to put water in my wine."

After dinner they went to take coffee at the Cafe Momus, where they had

already spent the preceding evening. It was from that day that the

establishment in question became uninhabitable by its other frequenters.

After coffee and nips of liqueurs the Bohemian clan, definitely founded,

returned to Marcel's lodging, which took the name of Schaunard's

Elysium. Whilst Colline went to order the supper he had promised, the

others bought squibs, crackers and other pyrotechnic materials, and

before sitting down to table they let off from the windows a magnificent

display of fireworks which turned the whole house topsy-turvey, and

during which the four friends shouted at the top of their voices--

"Let us celebrate this happy day."

The next morning they again found themselves all four together but

without seeming astonished this time. Before each going about his

business they went together and breakfasted frugally at the Cafe Momus,

where they made an appointment for the evening and where for a long time

they were seen to return daily.

Such are the chief personages who will reappear in the episodes of which

this volume is made up, a volume which is not a romance and has no other

pretension than that set forth on its title-page, for the "Bohemians of

the Latin Quarter" is only a series of social studies, the heroes of

which belong to a class badly judged till now, whose greatest crime is

lack of order, and who can even plead in excuse that this very lack of

order is a necessity of the life they lead.