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Bohemians of the Latin Quarter

by Henri Murger · English · Gutenberg #18445 · 588,741 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Bohemians of the Latin Quarter

Author: Henri Murger


        
Release date: May 27, 2006 [eBook #18445]
                Most recently updated: May 21, 2013

Language: English

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




CHAPTER II

A GOOD ANGEL


Schaunard and Marcel, who had been grinding away valiantly a whole
morning, suddenly struck work.

"Thunder and lightning! I'm hungry!" cried Schaunard. And he added
carelessly, "Do we breakfast today?"

Marcel appeared much astonished at this very inopportune question.

"How long has it been the fashion to breakfast two days running?" he
asked. "And yesterday was Thursday." He finished his reply by tracing
with his mahl-stick the ecclesiastic ordinance:

    "On Friday eat no meat,
     Nor aught resembling it."

Schaunard, finding no answer, returned to his picture, which represented
a plain inhabited by a red tree and a blue tree shaking branches; an
evident allusion to the sweets of friendship, which had a very
philosophical effect.

At this moment the porter knocked; he had brought a letter for Marcel.

"Three sous," said he.

"You are sure?" replied the artist. "Very well, you can owe it to us."

He shut the door in the man's face, and opened the letter. At the first
line, he began to vault around the room like a rope-dancer and thundered
out, at the top of his voice, this romantic ditty, which indicated with
him the highest pitch of ecstasy:

    "There were four juveniles in our street;
     They fell so sick they could not eat;
     They carried them to the hospital!--
     Tal! Tal! Tal! Tal!"

"Oh yes!" said Schaunard, taking him up:

    "They put all four into one big bed,
     Two at the feet and two at the head."

"Think I don't know it?" Marcel continued:

    "There came a sister of Charity--
     Ty! Ty! tee! tee!"

"If you don't stop," said Schaunard, who suspected signs of mental
alienation, "I'll play the allegro of my symphony on 'The Influence of
Blue in the Arts.'" So saying, he approached the piano.

This menace had the effect of a drop of cold water in a boiling fluid.
Marcel grew calm as if by magic. "Look there!" said he, passing the
letter to his friend. It was an invitation to dine with a deputy, an
enlightened patron of the arts in general and Marcel in particular,
since the latter had taken the portrait of his country-house.

"For today," sighed Schaunard. "Unluckily the ticket is not good for
two. But stay! Now I think of it, your deputy is of the government
party; you cannot, you must not accept. Your principles will not permit
you to partake of the bread which has been watered by the tears of the
people."

"Bah!" replied Marcel, "my deputy is a moderate radical; he voted
against the government the other day. Besides, he is going to get me an
order, and he has promised to introduce me in society. Moreover, this
may be Friday as much as it likes; I am famished as Ugolino, and I mean
to dine today. There now!"

"There are other difficulties," continued Schaunard, who could not help
being a little jealous of the good fortune that had fallen to his
friend's lot. "You can't dine out in a red flannel shirt and slippers."

"I shall borrow clothes of Rodolphe or Colline."

"Infatuated youth! Do you forget that this is the twentieth, and at this
time of the month their wardrobe is up to the very top of the spout?"

"Between now and five o'clock this evening I shall find a dress-coat."

"I took three weeks to get one when I went to my cousin's wedding and
that was in January."

"Well, then, I shall go as I am," said Marcel, with a theatrical stride.
"It shall certainly never be said that a miserable question of etiquette
hindered me from making my first step in society."

"Without boots," suggested his friend.

Marcel rushed out in a state of agitation impossible to describe. At the
end of two hours he returned, loaded with a false collar.

"Hardly worth while to run so far for that," said Schaunard. "There was
paper enough to make a dozen."

"But," cried Marcel, tearing his hair, "we must have some
things--confound it!" And he commenced a thorough investigation of every
corner of the two rooms. After an hour's search, he realized a costume
thus composed:

A pair of plaid trousers, a gray hat, a red cravat, a blue waistcoat,
two boots, one black glove, and one glove that had been white.

"That will make two black gloves on a pinch," said Schaunard. "You are
going to look like the solar spectrum in that dress. To be sure, a
colourist such as you are--"

Marcel was trying the boots. Alas! They are both for the same foot! The
artist, in despair, perceived an old boot in a corner which had served
as the receptacle of their empty bladders. He seized upon it.

"From Garrick to Syllable," said his jesting comrade, "one square-toed
and the other round."

"I am going to varnish them and it won't show."

"A good idea! Now you only want the dress-coat."

"Oh!" cried Marcel, biting his fists:

    "To have one would I give ten years of life,
     And this right hand, I tell thee."

They heard another knock at the door. Marcel opened it.

"Monsieur Schaunard?" inquired a stranger, halting on the threshold.

"At your service," replied the painter, inviting him in.

The stranger had one of those honest faces which typify the provincial.

"Sir," said he. "My cousin has often spoke to me of your talent for
portrait painting, and being on the point of making a voyage to the
colonies, whither I am deputed by the sugar refiners of the city of
Nantes, I wish to leave my family something to remember me by. That is
why I am come to see you."

"Holy Providence!" ejaculated Schaunard. "Marcel, a seat for Monsieur--"

"Blancheron," said the new-comer, "Blancheron of Nantes, delegate of the
sugar interest, Ex-Mayor, Captain of the National Guard, and author of a
pamphlet on the sugar question."

"I am highly honoured at having been chosen by you," said the artist,
with a low reverence to the delegate of the refiners. "How do you wish
to have your portrait taken?"

"In miniature," replied Blancheron, "like that," and he pointed to a
portrait in oil, for the delegate was one of that class with whom
everything smaller than the side of a house is miniature. Schaunard had
the measure of his man immediately, especially when the other added that
he wished to be painted with the best colours.

"I never use any other," said the artist. "How large do you wish it to
be?"

"About so big," answered the other, pointing to a kit-cat. "How much
will it be?"

"Sixty francs with the hands, fifty without."

"The deuce it will! My cousin talked of thirty francs."

"It depends on the season. Colours are much dearer at some times of the
year than at others."

"Bless me! It's just like sugar!"

"Precisely."

"Fifty francs then be it."

"You are wrong there; for ten francs more you will have your hands, and
I will put in them your pamphlet on the sugar question, which will have
a very good effect."

"By Jove, you are right!"

"Thunder and lightning!" said Schaunard to himself, "if he goes on so, I
shall burst, and hurt him with one of the pieces."

"Did you see?" whispered Marcel.

"What?"

"He has a black coat."

"I take. Let me manage."

"Well," quoth the delegate, "when do we begin? There is no time to
lose, for I sail soon."

"I have to take a little trip myself the day after tomorrow; so, if you
please, we will begin at once. One good sitting will help us along some
way."

"But it will soon be night, and you can't paint by candle light."

"My room is arranged so that we can work at all hours in it. If you will
take off your coat, and put yourself in position, we will commence."

"Take off my coat! What for?"

"You told me that you intend this portrait for your family."

"Certainly."

"Well, then, you ought to be represented in your at-home dress--in your
dressing gown. It is the custom to be so."

"But I haven't any dressing gown here."

"But I have. The case is provided for," quoth Schaunard, presenting to
his sitter a very ragged garment, so ornamented with paint-marks that
the honest provincial hesitated about setting into it.

"A very odd dress," said he.

"And very valuable. A Turkish vizier gave it to Horace Vernet, and he
gave it to me when he had done with it. I am a pupil of his."

"Are you a pupil of Vernet's?"

"I am proud to be," said the artist. "Wretch that I am!" he muttered to
himself, "I deny my gods and masters!"

"You have reason to be proud, my young friend," replied the delegate
donning the dressing-gown with the illustrious origin.

"Hang up Monsieur Blancheron's coat in the wardrobe," said Schaunard to
his friend, with a significant wink.

"Ain't he too good?" whispered Marcel as he pounced on his prey, and
nodded towards Blancheron. "If you could only keep a piece of him."

"I'll try; but do you dress yourself, and cut. Come back by ten; I will
keep him till then. Above all, bring me something in your pocket."

"I'll bring you a pineapple," said Marcel as he evaporated.

He dressed himself hastily; the dress-coat fit him like a glove. Then he
went out by the second door of the studio.

Schaunard set himself to work. When it was fairly night, Monsieur
Blancheron heard the clock strike six, and remembered that he had not
dined. He informed Schaunard of the fact.

"I am in the same position," said the other, "but to oblige you, I will
go without today, though I had an invitation in the Faubourg St.
Germain. But we can't break off now, it might spoil the resemblance."
And he painted away harder than ever. "By the way," said he, suddenly,
"we can dine without breaking off. There is a capital restaurant
downstairs, which will send us up anything we like." And Schaunard
awaited the effect of his trial of plurals.

"I accept your idea," said Blancheron, "an in return, I hope you will do
me the honor of keeping me company at table."

Schaunard bowed. "Really," said he to himself, "this is a fine fellow--a
very god-send. Will you order the dinner?" he asked his Amphitryon.

"You will oblige me by taking that trouble," replied the other,
politely.

"So much the worse for you, my boy," said the painter as he pitched down
the stairs, four steps at a time. Marching up to the counter, he wrote
out a bill of fare that made the Vatel of the establishment turn pale.

"Claret! Who's to pay for it?"

"Probably not I," said Schaunard, "but an uncle of mine that you will
find up there, a very good judge. So, do your best, and let us have
dinner in half an hour, served on your porcelain."

At eight o'clock, Monsieur Blancheron felt the necessity of pouring into
a friend's ear his idea on the sugar question, and accordingly recited
his pamphlet to Schaunard, who accompanied him on the piano.

At ten, they danced the galop together.

At eleven, they swore never to separate, and to make wills in each
other's favor.

At twelve, Marcel returned, and found them locked in a mutual embrace,
and dissolved in tears. The floor was half an inch deep in fluid--either
from that cause or the liquor that had been spilt. He stumbled against
the table, and remarked the splendid relics of the sumptuous feast. He
tried the bottles, they were utterly empty. He attempted to rouse
Schaunard, but the later menaced him with speedy death, if he tore him
from his friend Blancheron, of whom he was making a pillow.

"Ungrateful wretch!" said Marcel, taking out of his pocket a handful of
nuts, "when I had brought him some dinner!"




CHAPTER III

LENTEN LOVES


One evening in Lent Rodolphe returned home early with the idea of
working. But scarcely had he sat down at his table and dipped his pen in
the ink than he was disturbed by a singular noise. Putting his ear to
the treacherous partition that separated him from the next room, he
listened, and plainly distinguished a dialogue broken by the sound of
kisses and other amourous interruptions.

"The deuce," thought Rodolphe, glancing at his clock, "it is still
early, and my neighbor is a Juliet who usually keeps her Romeo till long
after the lark has sung. I cannot work tonight."

And taking his hat he went out. Handing in his key at the porter's
lodge he found the porter's wife half clasped in the arms of a gallant.
The poor woman was so flustered that it was five minutes before she
could open the latch.

"In point of fact," though Rodolphe, "there are times when porters grow
human again."

Passing through the door he found in its recess a sapper and a cook
exchanging the luck-penny of love.

"Hang it," said Rodolphe, alluding to the warrior and his robust
companion, "here are heretics who scarcely think that we are in Lent."

And he set out for the abode of one of his friends who lived in the
neighborhood.

"If Marcel is at home," he said to himself, "we will pass the evening in
abusing Colline. One must do something."

As he rapped vigorously, the door was partly opened, and a young man,
simply clad in a shirt and an eye-glass, presented himself.

"I cannot receive you," said he to Rodolphe.

"Why not?" asked the latter.

"There," said Marcel, pointing to a feminine head that had just peeped
out from behind a curtain, "there is my answer."

"It is not a pretty one," said Rodolphe, who had just had the door
closed in his face. "Ah!" said he to himself when he got into the
street, "what shall I do? Suppose I call on Colline, we could pass the
time in abusing Marcel."

Passing along the Rue de l'Ouest, usually dark and unfrequented,
Rodolphe made out a shade walking up and down in melancholy fashion, and
muttering in rhyme.

"Ho, ho!" said Rodolphe, "who is this animated sonnet loitering here?
What, Colline!"

"What Rodolphe! Where are you going?"

"To your place."

"You won't find me there."

"What are you doing here?"

"Waiting."

"What are you waiting for?"

"Ah!" said Colline in a tone of raillery, "what can one be waiting for
when one is twenty, when there are stars in the sky and songs in the
air?"

"Speak in prose."

"I am waiting for a girl."

"Good night," said Rodolphe, who went on his way continuing his
monologue. "What," said he, "is it St. Cupid's Day and cannot I take a
step without running up against people in love? It is scandalously
immoral. What are the police about?"

As the gardens of the Luxembourg were still open, Rodolphe passed into
them to shorten his road. Amidst the deserted paths he often saw
flitting before him, as though disturbed by his footsteps, couples
mysteriously interlaced, and seeking, as a poet has remarked, the
two-fold luxury of silence and shade.

"This," said Rodolphe, "is an evening borrowed from a romance." And yet
overcome, despite himself, by a langourous charm, he sat down on a seat
and gazed sentimentally at the moon.

In a short time he was wholly under the spell of a feverish
hallucination. It seemed to him that the gods and heroes in marble who
peopled the garden were quitting their pedestals to make love to the
goddesses and heroines, their neighbors, and he distinctly heard the
great Hercules recite a madrigal to the Vedella, whose tunic appeared to
him to have grown singularly short.

From the seat he occupied he saw the swan of the fountain making its way
towards a nymph of the vicinity.

"Good," thought Rodolphe, who accepted all this mythology, "There is
Jupiter going to keep an appointment with Leda; provided always that the
park keeper does not surprise them."

Then he leaned his forehead on his hand and plunged further into the
flowery thickets of sentiment. But at this sweet moment of his dream
Rodolphe was suddenly awakened by a park keeper, who came up and tapped
him on the shoulder.

"It is closing time, sir," said he.

"That is lucky," thought Rodolphe. "If I had stayed here another five
minutes I should have had more sentiment in my breast than is to be
found on the banks of the Rhine or in Alphonse Karr's romances."

And he hastened from the gardens humming a sentimental ballad that was
for him the _Marseillaise_ of love.

Half an hour later, goodness knows how, he was at the Prado, seated
before a glass of punch and talking with a tall fellow celebrated on
account of his nose, which had the singular privilege of being aquiline
when seen sideways, and a snub when viewed in front. It was a nose that
was not devoid of sharpness, and had a sufficiency of gallant adventures
to be in such a case to give good advice and be useful to its friend.

"So," said Alexander Schaunard, the man with the nose, "you are in
love."

"Yes, my dear fellow, it seized on me, just now, suddenly, like a bad
toothache in the heart."

"Pass me the tobacco," said Alexander.

"Fancy," continued Rodolphe, "for the last two hours I have met nothing
but lovers, men and women in couples. I had the notion of going into the
Luxembourg Gardens, where I saw all manner of phantasmagorias, that
stirred my heart extraordinarily. Ellegies are bursting from me, I bleat
and I coo; I am undergoing a metamorphosis, and am half lamb half turtle
dove. Look at me a bit, I must have wool and feathers."

"What have you been drinking?" said Alexander impatiently, "you are
chaffing me."

"I assure you that I am quite cool," replied Rodolphe. "That is to say,
no. But I will announce to you that I must embrace something. You see,
Alexander, it is not good for man to live alone, in short, you must help
me to find a companion. We will stroll through the ballroom, and the
first girl I point out to you, you must go and tell her that I love
her."

"Why don't you go and tell her yourself?" replied Alexander in his
magnificent nasal bass.

"Eh? my dear fellow," said Rodolphe. "I can assure you that I have quite
forgot how one sets about saying that sort of thing. In all my love
stories it has been my friends who have written the preface, and
sometimes even the _denouement_; I never know how to begin."

"It is enough to know how to end," said Alexander, "but I understand
you. I knew a girl who loved the oboe, perhaps you would suit her."

"Ah!" said Rodolphe. "I should like her to have white gloves and blue
eyes."

"The deuce, blue eyes, I won't say no--but gloves--you know that we
can't have everything at once. However, let us go into the aristocratic
regions."

"There," said Rodolphe, as they entered the saloon favored by the
fashionables of the place, "there is one who seems nice and quiet," and
he pointed out a young girl fairly well dressed who was seated in a
corner.

"Very good," replied Alexander, "keep a little in the background, I am
going to launch the fire-ship of passion for you. When it is necessary
to put in an appearance I will call you."

For ten minutes Alexander conversed with the girl, who from time to time
broke out in a joyous burst of laughter, and ended by casting towards
Rodolphe a smiling glance which said plainly enough, "Come, your
advocate has won the cause."

"Come," said Alexander, "the victory is ours, the little one is no doubt
far from cruel, but put on an air of simplicity to begin with."

"You have no need to recommend me to do that."

"Then give me some tobacco," said Alexander, "and go and sit down beside
her."

"Good heavens," said the young girl when Rodolphe had taken his place by
her side, "how funny you friend is, his voice is like a trumpet."

"That is because he is a musician."

Two hours later Rodolphe and his companion halted in front of a house
in the Rue St. Denis.

"It is here that I live," said the girl.

"Well, my dear Louise, when and where shall I see you again?"

"At your place at eight o'clock tomorrow evening."

"For sure?"

"Here is my pledge," replied Louise, holding up her rosy cheek to
Rodolphe's, who eagerly tasted this ripe fruit of youth and health.

Rodolphe went home perfectly intoxicated.

"Ah!" said he, striding up and down his room, "it can't go off like
that, I must write some verses."

The next morning his porter found in his room some thirty sheets of
paper, at the top of which stretched in solitary majesty of line--

    "Ah; love, oh! love, fair prince of youth."

That morning, contrary to his habits, Rodolphe had risen very early, and
although he had slept very little, he got up at once.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "today is the great day. But then twelve hours to
wait. How shall I fill up these twelve eternities?"

And as his glance fell on his desk he seemed to see his pen wriggle as
though intending to say to him "Work."

"Ah! yes, work indeed! A fig for prose. I won't stop here, it reeks of
ink."

He went off and settled himself in a cafe where he was sure not to meet
any friends.

"They would see that I am in love," he thought, "and shape my ideal for
me in advance."

After a very brief repast he was off to the railway station, and got
into a train. Half an hour later he was in the woods of Ville d'Avray.

Rodolphe strolled about all day, let loose amongst rejuvenated nature,
and only returned to Paris at nightfall.

After having put the temple which was to receive his idol in nature,
Rodolphe arrayed himself for the occasion, greatly regretting not being
able to dress in white.

From seven to eight o'clock he was a prey to the sharp fever of
expectation. A slow torture, that recalled to him the old days and the
old loves which had sweetened them. Then, according to habit, he already
began to dream of an exalted passion, a love affair in ten volumes, a
genuine lyric with moonlight, setting suns, meetings beneath the
willows, jealousies, sighs and all the rest. He was like this every time
chance brought a woman to his door, and not one had left him without
bearing away any aureola about her head and a necklace of tears about
her neck.

"They would prefer new boots or a bonnet," his friend remarked to him.

But Rodolphe persisted, and up to this time the numerous blunders he had
made had not sufficed to cure him. He was always awaiting a woman who
would consent to pose as an idol, an angel in a velvet gown, to whom he
could at his leisure address sonnets written on willow leaves.

At length Rodolphe heard the "holy hour" strike, and as the last stroke
sounded he fancied he saw the Cupid and Psyche surmounting his clock
entwine their alabaster arms about one another. At the same moment two
timid taps were given at the door.

Rodolphe went and opened it. It was Louise.

"You see I have kept my word," said she.

Rodolphe drew the curtain and lit a fresh candle.

During this operation the girl had removed her bonnet and shawl, which
she went and placed on the bed. The dazzling whiteness of the sheets
caused her to smile, and almost to blush.

Louise was rather pleasing than pretty; her fresh colored face presented
an attractive blending of simplicity and archness. It was something like
an outline of Greuze touched up by Gavarni. All her youthful attractions
were cleverly set off by a toilette which, although very simple,
attested in her that innate science of coquetry which all women possess
from their first swaddling clothes to their bridal robe. Louise
appeared besides to have made an especial study of the theory of
attitudes, and assumed before Rodolphe, who examined her with the
artistic eye, a number of seductive poses. Her neatly shod feet were of
satisfactory smallness, even for a romantic lover smitten by Andalusian
or Chinese miniatures. As to her hands, their softness attested
idleness. In fact, for six months past she had no longer any reason to
fear needle pricks. In short, Louise was one of those fickle birds of
passage who from fancy, and often from necessity, make for a day, or
rather a night, their nest in the garrets of the students' quarter, and
remain there willingly for a few days, if one knows how to retain them
by a whim or by some ribbons.

After having chatted for an hour with Louise, Rodolphe showed her, as an
example, the group of Cupid and Psyche.

"Isn't it Paul and Virginia?"

"Yes," replied Rodolphe, who did not want to vex her at the outset by
contradicting her.

"They are very well done," said Louise.

"Alas!" thought Rodolphe, gazing at her, "the poor child is not up to
much as regards literature. I am sure that her only orthography is that
of the heart. I must buy her a dictionary."

However, as Louise complained of her boots incommoding her, he
obligingly helped her to unlace them.

All at once the light went out.

"Hallo!" exclaimed Rodolphe, "who has blown the candle out?"

A joyful burst of laughter replied to him.

A few days later Rodolphe met one of his friends in the street.

"What are you up to?" said the latter. "One no longer sees anything of
you."

"I am studying the poetry of intimacy," replied Rodolphe.

The poor fellow spoke the truth. He sought from Louise more than the
poor girl could give him. An oaten pipe, she had not the strains of a
lyre. She spoke to, so to say, the jargon of love, and Rodolphe
insisted upon speaking the classic language. Thus they scarcely
understood each other.

A week later, at the same ball at which she had found Rodolphe, Louise
met a fair young fellow, who danced with her several times, and at the
close of the entertainment took her home with him.

He was a second year's student. He spoke the prose of pleasure very
fluently, and had good eyes and a well-lined pocket.

Louise asked him for ink and paper, and wrote to Rodolphe a letter
couched as follows:--

     "Do not rekkon on me at all. I sende you a kiss for the last time.
      Good bye.

      Louise."

As Rodolphe was reading this letter on reaching home in the evening, his
light suddenly went out.

"Hallo!" said he, reflectively, "it is the candle I first lit on the
evening that Louise came--it was bound to finish with our union. If I
had known I would have chosen a longer one," he added, in a tone of half
annoyance, half of regret, and he placed his mistress' note in a drawer,
which he sometimes styled the catacomb of his loves.

One day, being at Marcel's, Rodolphe picked up from the ground to light
his pipe with, a scrap of paper on which he recognized his handwriting
and the orthography of Louise.

"I have," said he to his friend, "an autograph of the same person, only
there are two mistakes the less than in yours. Does not that prove that
she loved me better than you?"

"That proves that you are a simpleton," replied Marcel. "White arms and
shoulders have no need of grammar."




CHAPTER IV

ALI RODOLPHE; OR, THE TURK PERFORCE


Ostracized by an inhospitable proprietor, Rodolphe had for some time
been leading a life compared with which the existence of a cloud is
rather stationary. He practiced assiduously the arts of going to bed
without supper, and supping without going to bed. He often dined with
Duke Humphrey, and generally slept at the sign of a clear sky. Still,
amid all these crosses and troubles, two things never forsook him; his
good humor and the manuscript of "The Avenger," a drama which had gone
the rounds of all the theaters in Paris.

One day Rodolphe, who had been jugged for some slight choreographic
extravagances, stumbled upon an uncle of his, one Monetti, a stove maker
and smokey chimney doctor, and sargeant of the National Guard, whom he
had not seen for an age. Touched by his nephew's misfortunes, Uncle
Monetti promised to ameliorate his position. We shall see how, if the
reader is not afraid of mounting six stories.

Take note of the banister, then, and follow. Up we go! Whew! One hundred
and twenty-five steps! Here we are at last. One more step, and we are in
the room; one more yet, and we should be out of it again. It's little,
but high up, with the advantages of good air and a fine prospect.

The furniture is composed of two French stoves, several German ditto,
some ovens on the economic plan, (especially if you never make fire in
them,) a dozen stove pipes, some red clay, some sheet iron, and a whole
host of heating apparatus. We may mention, to complete the inventory, a
hammock suspended from two nails inserted in the wall, a three-legged
garden chair, a candlestick adorned with its _bobeche_, and some other
similar objects of elegant art. As to the second room--that is to say,
the balcony--two dwarf cypresses, in pots, make a park of it for fine
weather.

At the moment of our entry, the occupant of the premises, a young man,
dressed like a Turk of the Comic Opera, is finishing a repast, in which
he shamelessly violates the law of the Prophet. Witness a bone that was
once a ham, and a bottle that has been full of wine. His meal over, the
young Turk stretches himself on the floor in true Eastern style, and
begins carelessly to smoke a _narghile_. While abandoning himself to
this Asiatic luxury, he passes his hand from time to time over the back
of a magnificent Newfoundland dog, who would doubtless respond to its
caresses where he not also in terra cotta, to match the rest of the
furniture.

Suddenly a noise was heard in the entry, and the door opened, admitting
a person who, without saying a word, marched straight to one of the
stoves, which served the purpose of a secretary, opened the stove-door,
and drew out a bundle of papers.

"Hallo!" cried the new-comer, after examining the manuscript
attentively, "the chapter on ventilators not finished yet!"

"Allow me to observe, uncle," replied the Turk, "the chapter on
ventilators is one of the most interesting in your book, and requires to
be studied with care. I am studying it."

"But you miserable fellow, you are always saying that same thing. And
the chapter on stoves--where are you in that?"

"The stoves are going on well, but, by the way, uncle, if you could give
me a little wood, it wouldn't hurt me. It is a little Siberia here. I am
so cold, that I make a thermometer go down below zero by just looking at
it."

"What! you've used up one faggot already?"

"Allow me to remark again, uncle, there are different kinds of faggots,
and yours was the very smallest kind."

"I'll send you an economic log--that keeps the heat."

"Exactly, and doesn't give any."

"Well," said the uncle as he went off, "you shall have a little faggot,
and I must have my chapter on stoves for tomorrow."

"When I have fire, that will inspire me," answered the Turk as he heard
himself locked in.

Were we making a tragedy, this would be the time to bring in a
confidant. Noureddin or Osman he should be called, and he should advance
towards our hero with an air at the same time discreet and patronizing,
to console him for his reverses, by means of these three verses:

    'What saddening grief, my Lord, assails you now?
     Why sits this pallor on your noble brow?
     Does Allah lend your plans no helping hand?
     Or cruel Ali, with severe command,
     Remove to other shores the beauteous dame,
     Who charmed your eyes and set your heart on flame!'

But we are not making a tragedy, so we must do without our confidant,
though he would be very convenient.

Our hero is not what he appears to be. The turban does not make the
Turk. This young man is our friend Rodolphe, entertained by his uncle,
for whom he is drawing up a manual of "The Perfect Chimney Constructor."
In fact, Monsieur Monetti, an enthusiast for his art, had consecrated
his days to this science of chimneys. One day he formed the idea of
drawing up, for the benefit of posterity, a theoretic code of the
principles of that art, in the practice of which he so excelled, and he
had chosen his nephew, as we have seen, to frame the substance of his
ideas in an intelligible form. Rodolphe was found in board, lodging, and
other contingencies, and at the completion of the manual was to receive
a recompense of three hundred francs.

In the beginning, to encourage his nephew, Monetti had generously made
him an advance of fifty francs. But Rodolphe, who had not seen so much
silver together for nearly a year, half crazy, in company with his
money, stayed out three days, and on the fourth came home alone!
Thereupon the uncle, who was in haste to have his "Manual" finished
inasmuch as he hoped to get a patent for it, dreading some new diversion
on his nephew's part, determined to make him work by preventing him from
going out. To this end he carried off his garments, and left him instead
the disguise under which we have seen him. Nevertheless, the famous
"Manual" continued to make very slow progress, for Rodolphe had no
genius whatever for this kind of literature. The uncle avenged himself
for this lazy indifference on the great subject of chimneys by making
his nephew undergo a host of annoyances. Sometimes he cut short his
commons, and frequently stopped the supply of tobacco.

One Sunday, after having sweated blood and ink upon the great chapter of
ventilators, Rodolphe broke the pen, which was burning his fingers, and
went out to walk--in his "park." As if on purpose to plague him, and
excite his envy the more, he could not cast a single look about him
without perceiving the figure of a smoker on every window.

On the gilt balcony of a new house opposite, an exquisite in his
dressing gown was biting off the end of an aristocratic "Pantellas"
cigar. A story above, an artist was sending before him an odorous cloud
of Turkish tobacco from his amber-mouthed pipe. At the window of a
_brasserie_, a fat German was crowning a foaming tankard, and emitting,
with the regularity of a machine, the dense puffs that escaped from his
meershaum. On the other side, a group of workmen were singing as they
passed on their way to the barriers, their "throat-scorchers" between
their teeth. Finally, all the other pedestrians visible in the street
were smoking.

"Woe is me!" sighed Rodolphe, "except myself and my uncle's chimneys,
all creation is smoking at this hour!" And he rested his forehead on the
bar of the balcony, and thought how dreary life was.

Suddenly, a burst of long and musical laughter parted under his feet.
Rodolphe bent forward a little, to discover the source of this volley of
gaiety, and perceived that he had been perceived by the tenant of the
story beneath him, Mademoiselle Sidonia, of the Luxembourg Theater. The
young lady advanced to the front of her balcony, rolling between her
fingers, with the dexterity of a Spaniard, a paper-full of light-colored
tobacco, which she took from a bag of embroidered velvet.

"What a sweet cigar girl it is!" murmured Rodolphe, in an ecstacy of
contemplation.

"Who is this Ali Baba?" thought Mademoiselle Sidonia on her part. And
she meditated on a pretext for engaging in conversation with Rodolphe,
who was himself trying to do the very same.

"Bless me!" cried the lady, as if talking to herself, "what a bore! I've
no matches!"

"Allow me to offer you some, mademoiselle," said Rodolphe, letting fall
on the balcony two or three lucifers rolled up in paper.

"A thousand thanks," replied Sidonia, lighting her cigarette.

"Pray, mademoiselle," continued Rodolphe, "in exchange for the trifling
service which my good angel has permitted me to render you, may I ask
you to do me a favor?"

"Asking already," thought the actress, as she regarded Rodolphe with
more attention. "They say these Turks are fickle, but very agreeable.
Speak sir," she continued, raising her head towards the young man, "what
do you wish?"

"The charity of a little tobacco, mademoiselle, only one pipe. I have
not smoked for two whole days."

"Most willingly, but how? Will you take the trouble to come downstairs?"

"Alas! I can't! I am shut up here, but am still free to employ a very
simple means." He fastened his pipe to a string, and let it glide down to
her balcony, where Sidonia filled it profusely herself. Rodolphe then
proceeded, with much ease and deliberation, to remount his pipe, which
arrived without accident. "Ah, mademoiselle!" he exclaimed, "how much
better this pipe would have seemed, if I could have lighted it at your
eyes!"

It was at least the hundredth edition of this amiable pleasantry, but
Sidonia found it superb for all that, and thought herself bound to
reply, "You flatter me."

"I assure you, mademoiselle, in right-down earnest, I think you
handsomer than all the Three Graces together."

"Decidedly, Ali Baba is very polite," thought Sidonia. "Are you really a
Turk?" she asked Rodolphe.

"Not by profession," he replied, "but by necessity. I am a dramatic
author."

"I am an artist," she replied, then added, "My dear sir and neighbor,
will you do me the honor to dine and spend the evening with me?"

"Alas!" answered Rodolphe, "though your invitation is like opening
heaven to me, it is impossible to accept it. As I had the honor to tell
you, I am shut up here by my uncle, Monsieur Monetti, stove-maker and
chimney doctor, whose secretary I am now."

"You shall dine with me for all that," replied Sidonia. "Listen, I shall
re-enter my room, and tap on the ceiling. Look where I strike and you
will find the traces of a trap which used to be there, and has since
been fastened up. Find the means of removing the piece of wood which
closes the hole, and then, although we are each in our own room, we
shall be as good as together."

Rodolphe went to work at once. In five minutes a communication was
established between the two rooms.

"It is a very little hole," said he, "but there will always be room
enough to pass you my heart."

"Now," said Sidonia, "we will go to dinner. Set your table, and I will
pass you the dishes."

Rodolphe let down his turban by a string, and brought it back laden with
eatables, then the poet and the actress proceeded to dine--on their
respective floors. Rodolphe devoured the pie with his teeth, and Sidonia
with his eyes.

"Thanks to you, mademoiselle," he said, when their repast was finished,
"my stomach is satisfied. Can you not also satisfy the void of my heart,
which has been so long empty?"

"Poor fellow!" said Sidonia, and climbing on a piece of furniture, she
lifted up her hand to Rodolphe's lips, who gloved it with kisses.

"What a pity," he exclaimed, "you can't do as St. Denis, who had the
privilege of carrying his head in his hands!"

To the dinner succeeded a sentimental literary conversation. Rodolphe
spoke of "The Avenger," and Sidonia asked him to read it. Leaning over
the hole, he began declaiming his drama to the actress, who, to hear
better, had put her arm chair on the top of a chest of drawers. She
pronounced "The Avenger" a masterpiece, and having some influence at the
theater, promised Rodolphe to get his piece received.

But at the most interesting moment a step was heard in the entry, about
as light as that of the Commander's ghost in "Don Juan." It was Uncle
Monetti. Rodolphe had only just time to shut the trap.

"Here," said Monetti to his nephew, "this letter has been running after
you for a month."

"Uncle! Uncle!" cried Rodolphe, "I am rich at last! This letter informs
me that I have gained a prize of three hundred francs, given by an
academy of floral games. Quick! my coat and my things! Let me go to
gather my laurels. They await me at the Capitol!"

"And my chapter on ventilators?" said Monetti, coldly.

"I like that! Give me my things, I tell you; I can't go out so!"

"You shall go out when my 'Manual' is finished," quoth the uncle,
shutting up his nephew under lock and key.

Rodolphe, when left alone, did not hesitate on the course to take. He
transformed his quilt into a knotted rope, which he fastened firmly to
his own balcony, and in spite of the risk, descended by this extempore
ladder upon Mademoiselle Sidonia's.

"Who is there?" she cried, on hearing Rodolphe knock at her window.

"Hush!" he replied, "open!"

"What do you want? Who are you?"

"Can you ask? I am the author of 'The Avenger,' come to look for my
heart, which I dropped through the trap into your room."

"Rash youth!" said the actress, "you might have killed yourself!"

"Listen, Sidonia," continued Rodolphe, showing her the letter he just
received. "You see, wealth and glory smile on me, let love do the same!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The following morning, by means of a masculine disguise, which Sidonia
procured for him, Rodolphe was enabled to escape from his uncle's
lodging. He ran to the secretary of the academy of floral games, to
receive a crown of gold sweetbrier, worth three hundred francs, which
lived

    "--as live roses the fairest--
     The space of a day."

A month after, Monsieur Monetti was invited by his nephew to assist at
the first representation of "The Avenger." Thanks to the talent of
Mademoiselle Sidonia, the piece had a run of seventeen nights, and
brought in forty francs to its author.

Some time later--it was in the warm season--Rodolphe lodged in the
Avenue St. Cloud, third tree as you go out of the Bois de Boulogne, on
the fifth branch.




CHAPTER V

THE CARLOVINGIAN COIN


Towards the end of December the messengers of Bidault's agency were
entrusted with the distribution of about a hundred copies of a letter of
invitation, of which we certify that the following to be a true and
genuine copy:--

     -----

     _M.M. Rodolphe and Marcel request the honor of your company on
     Saturday next, Christmas Eve. Fun!_

     _P.S. Life is short!_

                  _PROGRAM OF THE ENTERTAINMENT_

                             _PART I_

     _7 o'clock--Opening of the saloons. Brisk and witty conversation._

     _8.--Appearance of the talented authors of "The Mountain in Labor,"
     comedy refused at the Odeon Theater._

     _8:30.--M. Alexander Schaunard, the eminent virtuoso, will play
     his imitative symphony, "The Influence of Blue in Art," on the
     piano._

     _9.--First reading of the essay on the "Abolition of the penalty of
     tragedy."_

     _9:30.--Philosophical and metaphysical argument between M. Colline,
     hyperphysical philosopher, and M. Schaunard. To avoid any collision
     between the two antagonists, they will both be securely fastened._

     _10.--M. Tristan, master of literature, will narrate his early
     loves, accompanied on the piano by M. Alexander Schaunard._

     _10:30.--Second reading of the essay on the "Abolition of the
     penalty of tragedy."_

     _11.--Narration of a cassowary hunt by a foreign prince._

                             _PART II_

     _Midnight.--M. Marcel, historical painter, will execute with his
     eyes bandaged an impromptu sketch in chalk of the meeting of
     Voltaire and Napolean in the Elyssian Fields. M. Rodolphe will also
     improvise a parallel between the author of Zaire, and the victor of
     Austerlitz._

     _12:30.--M. Gustave Colline, in a decent undress, will give an
     imitation of the athletic games of the 4th Olympiad._

     _1.--Third reading of the essay on the "Abolition of the penalty of
     tragedy," and subscription on behalf of tragic authors who will one
     day find themselves out of employment._

     _2.--Commencement of games and organization of quadrilles to last
     until morning._

     _6.--Sunrise and final chorus._

     _During the whole of entertainment ventilators will be in action._

     _N.B. Anyone attempting to read or recite poetry will be summarily
     ejected and handed over to the police. The guests are equally
     requested not to help themselves to the candle ends._

Two days later, copies of this invitation were circulating among the
lower depths of art and literature, and created a profound sensation.

There were, however, amongst the invited guests, some who cast doubt
upon the splendor of the promises made by the two friends.

"I am very skeptical about it," said one of them. "I have sometimes gone
to Rodolphe's Thursdays in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, when one could
only sit on anything morally, and where all one had to drink was a
little filtered water in eclectic pottery."

"This time," said another, "it is really serious. Marcel has shown me
the program of the fete, and the effect will be magical."

"Will there be any ladies?"

"Yes. Phemie Teinturiere has asked to be queen of the fete and Schaunard
is to bring some ladies of position."

This is in brief the origin of this fete which caused such stupefaction
in the Bohemian world across the water. For about a year past, Marcel
and Rodolphe had announced this sumptuous gala which was always to take
place "next Saturday," but painful circumstances had obliged their
promise to extend over fifty-two weeks, so that they had come to pass of
not being able to take a step without encountering some ironical remark
from one of their friends, amongst whom there were some indiscreet
enough to put forward energetic demand for its fulfillment. The matter
beginning to assume the character of a plague, the two friends resolved
to put an end to it by liquidating the undertaking into which they had
entered. It was thus that they sent out the invitation given above.

"Now," said Rodolphe, "there is no drawing back. We have burnt our
ships, and we have before us just a week to find the hundred francs that
are indispensable to do the thing properly."

"Since we must have them, we shall," replied Marcel.

And with the insolent confidence which they had in luck, the two friends
went to sleep, convinced that their hundred francs were already on the
way, the way of impossibility.

However, as on the day before that appointed for the party, nothing as
of yet had turned up, Rodolphe thought perhaps, be safer to give luck a
helping hand, unless he were to be discredited forever, when the time
came to light up. To facilitate matters the two friends progressively
modified the sumptuosity of the program they had imposed upon
themselves.

And proceeding from modification to modification, after having seriously
reduced the item "cakes," and carefully revised and pruned down the item
"liquors," the total cost was reduced to fifteen francs.

The problem was simplified, but not yet solved.

"Come, come," said Rodolphe, "we must now have recourse to strong
measures, we cannot cry off this time."

"No, that is impossible," replied Marcel.

"How long is it since I have heard the story of the Battle of
Studzianka?"

"About two months."

"Two months, good, that is a decent interval; my uncle will have no
ground for grumbling. I will go tomorrow and hear his account of that
engagement, that will be five francs for certain."

"I," said Marcel, "will go and sell a deserted manor house to old
Medicis. That will make another five francs. If I have time enough to
put in three towers and a mill, it will perhaps run to ten francs, and
our budget will be complete."

And the two friends fell asleep dreaming that the Princess Belgiojoso
begged them to change their reception day, in order not to rob her of
her customary guests.

Awake at dawn, Marcel took a canvas and rapidly set to work to build up
a deserted manor house, an article which he was in the habit of
supplying to a broker of the Place de Carrousel. On his side, Rodolphe
went to pay a visit to his Uncle Monetti, who shone in the story of the
Retreat from Moscow, and to whom Rodolphe accorded five or six times in
course of the year, when matters were really serious, the satisfaction
of narrating his campaigns, in return for a small loan which the veteran
stove maker did not refuse too obstinately when due enthusiasm was
displayed in listening to his narrations.

About two o'clock, Marcel with hanging head and a canvas under his arm,
met on the Place de Carrousel Rodolphe, who was returning from his
uncle's, and whose bearing also presaged ill news.

"Well," asked Marcel, "did you succeed?"

"No, my uncle has gone to Versailles. And you?"

"That beast of a Medicis does not want any more ruined manor houses. He
wants me to do him a Bombardment of Tangiers."

"Our reputations are ruined forever if we do not give this party,"
murmured Rodolphe. "What will my friend, the influential critic, think
if I make him put on a white tie and yellow kids for nothing."

And both went back to the studio, a prey to great uneasiness.

At that moment the clock of a neighbor struck four.

"We have only three hours before us," said Rodolphe despondingly.

"But," said Marcel, going up to his friend, "are you quite sure, certain
sure, that we have no money left anywhere hereabout? Eh?"

"Neither here, nor elsewhere. Where do you suppose it could come from?"

"If we looked under the furniture, in the stuffing of the arm chairs?
They say that the emigrant noblemen used to hide their treasures in the
days of Robespierre. Who can tell? Perhaps our arm chair belonged to an
emigrant nobleman, and besides, it is so hard that the idea has often
occurred to me that it must be stuffed with metal. Will you dissect it?"

"This is mere comedy," replied Rodolphe, in a tone in which severity was
mingled with indulgence.

Suddenly Marcel, who had gone on rummaging in every corner of the
studio, uttered a loud cry of triumph.

"We are saved!" he exclaimed. "I was sure that there was money here.
Behold!" and he showed Rodolphe a coin as large as a crown piece, and
half eaten away by rust and verdigris.

It was a Carlovingian coin of some artistic value. The legend, happily
intact, showed the date of Charlemagne's reign.

"That, that's worth thirty sous," said Rodolphe, with a contemptuous
glance at his friend's find.

"Thirty sous well employed will go a great way," replied Marcel. "With
twelve hundred men Bonaparte made ten thousand Austrians lay down their
arms. Skill can replace numbers. I will go and swap the Carlovingian
crown at Daddy Medicis'. Is there not anything else saleable here?
Suppose I take the plaster cast of the tibia of Jaconowski, the Russian
drum major."

"Take the tibia. But it is a nuisance, there will not be a single
ornament left here."

During Marcel's absence, Rodolphe, his mind made up that that party
should be given in any case, went in search of his friend Colline, the
hyperphysical philosopher, who lived hard by.

"I have come," said he, "to ask you to do me a favor. As host I must
positively have a black swallow-tail, and I have not got one; lend me
yours."

"But," said Colline hesitating, "as a guest I shall want my black
swallow-tail too."

"I will allow you to come in a frock coat."

"That won't do. You know very well I have never had a frock coat."

"Well, then, it can be settled in another way. If needs be, you need not
come to my party, and can lend me your swallow-tail."

"That would be unpleasant. I am on the program, and must not be
lacking."

"There are plenty of other things that will be lacking," said Rodolphe.
"Lend me your black swallow-tail, and if you will come, come as you
like; in your shirt sleeves, you will pass for a faithful servant."

"Oh no!" said Colline, blushing. "I will wear my great coat. But all the
same, it is very unpleasant." And as he saw Rodolphe had already seized
on the famous black swallow-tail, he called out to him, "Stop a bit.
There are some odds and ends in the pockets."

Colline's swallow-tail deserves a word or two. In the first place it was
of a decided blue, and it was from habit that Colline spoke of it as "my
black swallow-tail." And as he was the only one of the band owning a
dress coat, his friends were likewise in the habit of saying, when
speaking of the philosopher's official garment, "Colline's black
swallow-tail." In addition to this, this famous garment had a special
cut, the oddest imaginable. The tails, very long, and attached to a very
short waist, had two pockets, positive gulfs, in which Colline was
accustomed to store some thirty of the volumes which he eternally
carried about with him. This caused his friends to remark that during
the time that the public libraries were closed, savants and literary men
could go and refer to the skirts of Colline's swallow-tail--a library
always open.

That day, extraordinary to relate, Colline's swallow-tail only contained
a quarto volume of Bayle, a treatise on the hyperphysical faculties in
three volumes, a volume of Condillac, two of Swedenborg and Pope's
"Essay on Man." When he had cleared his bookcase-garment, he allowed
Rodolphe to clothe himself in it.

"Hallo!" said the latter, "the left pocket still feels very heavy; you
have left something in it."

"Ah!" exclaimed Colline, "that is so. I forgot to empty the foreign
languages pocket."

And he took out from this two Arabic grammars, a Malay dictionary, and a
stock breeder's manual in Chinese, his favorite reading.

When Rodolphe returned home he found Marcel playing pitch-and-toss with
three five franc pieces. At first Rodolphe refused his friend's
proferred hand--he thought some crime had been committed.

"Let us make haste, let us make haste," said Marcel, "we have the
fifteen francs required. This is how it happened. I met an antiquary at
Medicis'. When he saw the coin he was almost taken ill; it was the only
one wanting in his cabinet. He had sent everywhere to get this vacancy
filled up, and had lost all hope. Thus, when he had thoroughly examined
my Carlovingian crown piece, he did not hesitate for a moment to offer
me five francs for it. Medicis nudged me with his elbow; a look from
him completed the business. He meant, 'share the profits of the sale,
and I will bid against him.' We ran it up to thirty francs. I gave the
Jew fifteen, and here are the rest. Now our guests may come; we are in a
position to dazzle them. Hallo! You have got a swallow-tail!"

"Yes," said Rodolphe, "Colline's swallow-tail." And as he was feeling
for his handkerchief, Rodolphe pulled out a small volume in a Tartar
dialect, overlooked in the foreign literature pocket.

The two friends at once proceeded to make their preparations. The studio
was set in order, a fire kindled in the stove, the stretcher of a
picture, garnished with composite candles, suspended from the ceiling
as a chandelier, and a writing table placed in the middle of the studio
to serve as a rostrum for the orators. The solitary armchair, which was
to be reserved for the influential critic, was placed in front of it,
and upon a table were arranged all the books, romances, poems,
pamphlets, &c., the authors of which were to honor the company with
their presence.

In order to avoid any collision between members of the different schools
of literature, the studio had been, moreover, divided into four
compartments, at the entrance to each of which could be read, on four
hurriedly manufactured placards, the inscriptions--"Poets," "Prose
Writers," "Classic School," and "Romantic School."

The ladies were to occupy a space reserved in the middle of the studio.

"Humph! Chairs are lacking," said Rodolphe.

"Oh!" remarked Marcel, "there are several on the landing, fastened along
the wall. Suppose we were to gather them."

"Certainly, let us gather them by all means," said Rodolphe, starting
off to seize on the chairs, which belonged to some neighbor.

Six o'clock struck: the two friends went off to a hasty dinner, and
returned to light up the saloons. They were themselves dazzled by the
result. At seven o'clock Schaunard arrived, accompanied by three ladies,
who had forgotten their diamonds and their bonnets. One of them wore a
red shawl with black spots. Schaunard pointed out this lady particularly
to Rodolphe.

"She is a woman accustomed to the best society," said he, "an
Englishwoman whom the fall of the Stuarts has driven into exile, she
lives in a modest way by giving lessons in English. Her father was Lord
Chancellor under Cromwell, she told me, so we must be polite with her.
Don't be too familiar."

Numerous footsteps were heard on the stairs. It was the guests arriving.
They seemed astonished to see a fire burning in the stove.

Rodolphe's swallow-tail went to greet the ladies, and kissed their hands
with a grace worthy of the Regency. When there was a score of persons
present, Schaunard asked whether it was not time for a round of drinks.

"Presently," said Marcel. "We are waiting for the arrival of the
influential critic to set fire to the punch."

At eight o'clock the whole of the guests had arrived, and the execution
of the program commenced. Each item was alternated with a round of drink
of some kind, no one ever knew what.

Towards ten o'clock the white waistcoat of the influential critic made
its appearance. He only stayed an hour, and was very sober in the
consumption of refreshments.

At midnight, as there was no more wood, and it was very cold, the guests
who were seated drew lots as to who should cast his chair into the fire.

By one o'clock every one was standing.

Amiable gaiety did not cease to reign amongst the guests. There were no
accidents to be regretted, with the exception of a rent in the foreign
languages pocket of Colline's swallow-tail and a smack in the face given
by Schaunard to the daughter of Cromwell's Lord Chancellor.

This memorable evening was for a week the staple subject of gossip in
the district, and Phemie Teinturiere, who had been the queen of the
fete, was accustomed to remark, when talking it over with her friends,--

"It was awfully fine. There were composite candles, my dear."




CHAPTER VI

MADEMOISELLE MUSETTE


Mademoiselle Musette was a pretty girl of twenty who shortly after her
arrival in Paris had become what many pretty girls become when they
have a neat figure, plenty of coquesttishness, a dash of ambition and
hardly any education. After having for a long time shone as the star of
the supper parties of the Latin Quarter, at which she used to sing in a
voice, still very fresh if not very true, a number of country ditties,
which earned her the nickname under which she has since been
immortalized by one of our neatest rhymsters, Mademoiselle Musette
suddenly left the Rue de la Harpe to go and dwell upon the Cytherean
heights of the Breda district.

She speedily became one of the foremost of the aristocracy of pleasure
and slowly made her way towards that celebrity which consists in being
mentioned in the columns devoted to Parisian gossip, or lithographed at
the printsellers.

However Mademoiselle Musette was an exception to the women amongst whom
she lived. Of a nature instinctively elegant and poetical, like all
women who are really such, she loved luxury and the many enjoyments
which it procures; her coquetry warmly coveted all that was handsome and
distinguished; a daughter of the people, she would not have been in any
way out of her element amidst the most regal sumptuosity. But
Mademoiselle Musette, who was young and pretty, had never consented to
be the mistress of any man who was not like herself young and handsome.
She had been known bravely to refuse the magnificient offers of an old
man so rich that he was styled the Peru of the Chaussee d'Antin, and who
had offered a golden ladder to the gratification of her fancies.
Intelligent and witty, she had also a repugnance for fools and
simpletons, whatever might be their age, their title and their name.

Musette, therefore, was an honest and pretty girl, who in love adopted
half of Champfort's famous amphoris, "Love is the interchange of two
caprices." Thus her connection had never been preceded by one of those
shameful bargains which dishonor modern gallantry. As she herself said,
Musette played fair and insisted that she should receive full change for
her sincerity.

But if her fancies were lively and spontaneous, they were never durable
enough to reach the height of a passion. And the excessive mobility of
her caprices, the little care she took to look at the purse and the
boots of those who wished to be considered amongst them, brought about a
corresponding mobility in her existence which was a perpetual
alternation of blue broughams and omnibuses, first floors and fifth
stories, silken gowns and cotton frocks. Oh cleaning girl! Living poem
of youth with ringing laugh and joyous song! Tender heart beating for
one and all beneath your half-open bodice! Ah Mademoiselle Musette,
sister of Bernette and Mimi Pinson, it would need the pen of Alfred de
Musset to fitly narrate your careless and vagabond course amidst the
flowery paths of youth; and he would certainly have celebrated you, if
like me, he had heard you sing in your pretty false notes, this couplet
from one of your favorite ditties:

    "It was a day in Spring
     When love I strove to sing
     Unto a nut brown maid.
     O'er face as fair as dawn
     Cast a bewitching shade,"

The story we are about to tell is one of the most charming in the life
of this charming adventuress who wore so many green gowns.

At a time when she was the mistress of a young Counsellor of State, who
had gallantly placed in her hands the key of his ancestral coffers,
Mademoiselle Musette was in the habit of receiving once a week in her
pretty drawing room in the Rue de la Bruyere. These evenings resembled
most Parisian evenings, with the difference that people amused
themselves. When there was not enough room they sat on one another's
knees, and it often happened that the same glass served for two.
Rodolphe, who was a friend of Musette and never anything more than a
friend, without either of them knowing why--Rodolphe asked leave to
bring his friend, the painter Marcel.

"A young fellow of talent," he added, "for whom the future is
embroidering his Academician's coat."

"Bring him," said Musette.

The evening they were to go together to Musette's Rodolphe called on
Marcel to fetch him. The artist was at his toilet.

"What!" said Rodolphe, "you are going into society in a colored shirt?"

"Does that shock custom?" observed Marcel quietly.

"Shock custom, it stuns it."

"The deuce," said Marcel, looking at his shirt, which displayed a
pattern of boars pursued by dogs, on a blue ground. "I have not another
here. Oh! Bah! So much the worse, I will put on a collar, and as
'Methuselah' buttons to the neck no one will see the color of my lines."

"What!" said Rodolphe uneasy, "you are going to wear 'Methuselah'?"

"Alas!" replied Marcel, "I must, God wills it and my tailor too; besides
it has a new set of buttons and I have just touched it up with ivory
black."

"Methuselah" was merely Marcel's dress coat. He called it so because it
was the oldest garment of his wardrobe. "Methuselah" was cut in the
fashion of four years' before and was, besides of a hideous green, but
Marcel declared that it looked black by candlelight.

In five minutes Marcel was dressed, he was attired in the most perfect
bad taste, the get-up of an art student going into society.

M. Casimir Bonjour will never be so surprised the day he learns his
election as a member of the Institute as were Rodolphe and Marcel on
reaching Mademoiselle Musette's.

This is the reason for their astonishment: Mademoiselle Musette who for
some time past had fallen out with her lover the Counsellor of State,
had been abandoned by him at a very critical juncture. Legal proceedings
having been taken by her creditors and her landlord, her furniture had
been seized and carried down into the courtyard in order to be taken
away and sold on the following day. Despite this incident Mademoiselle
Musette had not for a moment the idea of giving her guests the slip and
did not put off her party. She had the courtyard arranged as a drawing
room, spread a carpet on the pavement, prepared everything as usual,
dressed to receive company, and invited all the tenants to her little
entertainment, towards which Heaven contributed its illumination.

This jest had immense success, never had Musette's evenings displayed
such go and gaiety; they were still dancing and singing when the porters
came to take away furniture and carpets and the company was obliged to
withdraw.

Musette bowed her guests out, singing:

    "They will laugh long and loud, tralala,
     At my Thursday night's crowd
     They will laugh long and loud, tralala."

Marcel and Rodolphe alone remained with Musette, who ascended to her
room where there was nothing left but the bed.

"Ah, but my adventure is no longer such a lively one after all," said
Musette. "I shall have to take up my quarters out of doors."

"Oh madame!" said Marcel, "if I had the gifts of Plutus I should like to
offer you a temple finer than that of Solomon, but--"

"You are not Plutus. All the same I thank you for your good intentions.
Ah!" she added, glancing around the room, "I was getting bored here, and
then the furniture was old. I had had it nearly six months. But that is
not all, after the dance one should sup."

"Let us sup-pose," said Marcel, who had an itch of punning, above all
in the morning, when he was terrible.

As Rodolphe had gained some money at the lansquenet played during the
evening, he carried off Musette and Marcel to a restaurant which was
just opening.

After breakfast, the three, who had no inclination for sleep, spoke of
finishing the day in the country, and as they found themselves close to
the railway station they got into the first train that started, which
landed them at Saint Germain.

During the whole of the night of the party and all of the rest of the
day Marcel, who was gunpowder which a single glance sufficed to kindle,
had been violently smitten by Mademoiselle Musette and paid her
"highly-colored court," as he put it to Rodolphe. He even went so far as
to propose to the pretty girl to buy her furniture handsomer than the
last with the result of the sale of his famous picture, "The Passage of
the Red Sea." Hence the artist saw with pain the moment arrive when it
became necessary to part from Musette, who whilst allowing him to kiss
her hands, neck and sundry other accessories, gently repulsed him every
time that he tried to violently burgle her heart.

On reaching Paris, Rodolphe left his friend with the girl, who asked the
artist to see her to her door.

"Will you allow me to call on you?" asked Marcel, "I will paint your
portrait."

"My dear fellow," replied she, "I cannot give you my address, since
tomorrow I may no longer have one, but I will call and see you, and I
will mend your coat, which has a hole so big that one could shoot the
moon through it."

"I will await your coming like that of the messiah," said Marcel.

"Not quite so long," said Musette, laughing.

"What a charming girl," said Marcel to himself, as he slowly walked
away. "She is the Goddess of Mirth. I will make two holes in my coat."

He had not gone twenty paces before he felt himself tapped on the
shoulder. It was Mademoiselle Musette.

"My dear Monsieur Marcel," said she, "are you a true knight?"

"I am. 'Rubens and my lady,' that is my motto."

"Well then, hearken to my woes and pity take, most noble sir," returned
Musette, who was slightly tinged with literature, although she murdered
grammar in fine style, "the landlord has taken away the key of my room
and it is eleven o'clock at night. Do you understand?"

"I understand," said Marcel, offering Musette his arm. He took her to
his studio on the Quai aux Fleurs.

Musette was hardly able to keep awake, but she still had strength
enough to say to Marcel, taking him by the hand, "You remember what you
have promised?"

"Oh Musette! charming creature!" said the artist in a somewhat moved
tone, "you are here beneath a hospitable roof, sleep in peace. Good
night, I am off."

"Why so?" said Musette, her eyes half closed. "I am not afraid, I can
assure you. In the first place, there are two rooms. I will sleep on
your sofa."

"My sofa is too hard to sleep on, it is stuffed with carded pebbles. I
will give you hospitality here, and ask it for myself from a friend who
lives on the same landing. It will be more prudent," said he. "I usually
keep my word, but I am twenty-two and you are eighteen, Musette,--and I
am off. Good night."

The next morning at eight o'clock Marcel entered her room with a pot of
flowers that he had gone and bought in the market. He found Musette, who
had thrown herself fully dressed on the bed, and was still sleeping. At
the noise made by him she woke, and held out her hand.

"What a good fellow," said she.

"Good fellow," repeated Marcel, "is not that a term of ridicule?"

"Oh!" exclaimed Musette, "why should you say that to me? It is not nice.
Instead of saying spiteful things offer me that pretty pot of flowers."

"It is, indeed, for you that I have brought them up," said Marcel. "Take
it, and in return for my hospitality sing me one of your songs, the echo
of my garret may perhaps retain something of your voice, and I shall
still hear you after you have departed."

"Oh! so you want to show me the door?" said Musette. "Listen, Marcel, I
do not beat about the bush to say what my thoughts are. You like me and
I like you. It is not love, but it is perhaps its seed. Well, I am not
going away, I am going to stop here, and I shall stay here as long as
the flowers you have just given me remain unfaded."

"Ah!" exclaimed Marcel, "they will fade in a couple of days. If I had
known I would have bought immortelles."

       *       *       *       *       *

For a fortnight Musette and Marcel lived together, and led, although
often without money, the most charming life in the world. Musette felt
for the artist an affection which had nothing in common with her
preceding passions, and Marcel began to fear that he was seriously in
love with his mistress. Ignorant that she herself was very much afraid
of being equally smitten, he glanced every morning at the condition of
the flowers, the death of which was to bring about the severance of
their connection, and found it very difficult to account for their
continued freshness. But he soon had a key to the mystery. One night,
waking up, he no longer found Musette beside him. He rose, hastened into
the next room, and perceived his mistress, who profited nightly by his
slumbers to water the flowers and hinder them from perishing.




CHAPTER VII

THE BILLOWS OF PACTOLUS


It was the nineteenth of March, 184--. Should Rodolphe reach the age of
Methuselah, he will never forget the date; for it was on that day, at
three in the afternoon, that our friend issued from a banker's where he
had just received five hundred francs in current and sounding specie.

The first use Rodolphe made of this slice of Peru which had fallen into
his pocket was not to pay his debts, inasmuch as he had sworn to himself
to practice economy and go to no extra expense. He had a fixed idea on
this subject, and declared that before thinking of superfluities, one
ought to provide for necessaries. Therefore it was that he paid none of
his creditors, and bought a Turkish pipe which he had long coveted.

Armed with this purchase, he directed his steps towards the lodging of
his friend Marcel, who had for some time given him shelter. As he
entered Marcel's studio, Rodolphe's pockets rang like a village-steeple
on a grand holiday. On hearing this unusual sound, Marcel supposed it
was one of his neighbors, a great speculator, counting his profits on
'Change, and muttered, "There's that impertinent fellow next door
beginning his music again! If this is to go on, I shall give notice to
the landlord. It's impossible to work with such a noise. It tempts one
to quit one's condition of poor artist and turn robber, forty times
over."

So, never suspecting that it was his friend Rodolphe changed into a
Croesus, Marcel again set to work on his "Passage of the Red Sea," which
had been on his easel nearly three years.

Rodolphe, who had not yet spoken, meditating an experiment which he was
about to make on his friend, said to himself, "We shall laugh in a
minute. Won't it be fun?" and he let fall a five-franc piece on the
floor.

Marcel raised his eyes and looked at Rodolphe, who was as grave as an
article in the "Revue des deux Mondes." Then he picked up the piece of
money with a well-satisfied air, and made a courteous salute to it; for,
vagabond artist as he was, he understood the usages of society, and was
very civil to strangers. Knowing, moreover, that Rodolphe had gone out
to look for money, Marcel, seeing that his friend had succeeded in his
operations, contented himself with admiring the result, without
inquiring by what means it had been obtained. Accordingly, he went to
work again without speaking, and finished drowning an Egyptian in the
waves of the Red Sea. As he was terminating this homicide, Rodolphe let
fall another piece, laughing in his sleeve at the face the painter was
going to make.

At the sonorous sound of the metal, Marcel bounded up as if he had
received an electric shock, and cried, "What! Number two!"

A third piece rolled on the floor, then another, then one more; finally
a whole quadrille of five-franc pieces were dancing in the room.

Marcel began to show evident signs of mental alienation; and Rodolphe
laughed like the pit of a Parisian theatre at the first representation
of a very tragical tragedy. Suddenly, and without any warning, he
plunged both hands into his pockets, and the money rushed out in a
supernatural steeple-chase. It was an inundation of Pactolus; it was
Jupiter entering Danae's chamber.

Marcel remained silent, motionless, with a fixed stare; his astonishment
was gradually operating upon him a transformation similar to that which
the untimely curiosity of Lott's wife brought upon her: by the time that
Rodolphe had thrown his last hundred francs on the floor, the painter
was petrified all down one side of his body.

Rodolphe laughed and laughed. Compared with his stormy mirth, the
thunder of an orchestra of sax-horns would have been no more than the
crying of a child at the breast.

Stunned, strangled, stupefied by his emotions, Marcel thought himself in
a dream. To drive away the nightmare, he bit his finger till he brought
blood, and almost made himself scream with pain. He then perceived that,
though trampling upon money, he was perfectly awake. Like a personage in
a tragedy, he ejaculated:

"Can I believe my eyes?" and then seizing Rodolphe's hand, he added,
"Explain to me this mystery."

"Did I explain it 'twould be one no more."

"Come, now!"

"This gold is the fruit of the sweat of my brow," said Rodolphe, picking
up the money and arranging it on the table. He then went a few steps and
looked respectfully at the five hundred francs ranged in heaps, thinking
to himself, "Now then, my dreams will be realized!"

"There cannot be much less than six thousand francs there," thought
Marcel to himself, as he regarded the silver which trembled on the
table. "I've an idea! I shall ask Rodolphe to buy my 'Passage of the Red
Sea.'"

All at once Rodolphe put himself into a theatrical attitude, and, with
great solemnity of voice and gesture, addressed the artist:

"Listen to me, Marcel: the fortune which has dazzled your eyes is not
the product of vile maneuvers; I have not sold my pen; I am rich, but
honest. This gold, bestowed by a generous hand, I have sworn to use in
laboriously acquiring a serious position--such as a virtuous man should
occupy. Labor is the most scared of duties--."

"And the horse, the noblest of animals," interrupted Marcel.

"Bah! where did you get that sermon? Been through a course of good
sense, no doubt."

"Interrupt me not," replied Rodolphe, "and truce to your railleries.
They will be blunted against the buckler of invulnerable resolution in
which I am from this moment clad."

"That will do for prologue. Now the conclusion."

"This is my design. No longer embarrassed about the material wants of
life, I am going seriously to work. First of all, I renounce my vagabond
existence: I shall dress like other people, set up a black coat, and go
to evening parties. If you are willing to follow in my footsteps, we
will continue to live together but you must adopt my program. The
strictest economy will preside over our life. By proper management we
have before us three months' work without any preoccupation. But we must
be economical."

"My dear fellow," said Marcel, "economy is a science only practicable
for rich people. You and I, therefore, are ignorant of its first
elements. However, by making an outlay of six francs we can have the
works of Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Say, a very distinguished economist, who
will perhaps teach us how to practice the art. Hallo! You have a Turkish
pipe there!"

"Yes, I bought it for twenty-five francs."

"How is that! You talk of economy, and give twenty-five francs for a
pipe!"

"And this is an economy. I used to break a two-sous pipe every day, and
at the end of the year that came to a great deal more."

"True, I should never have thought of that."

They heard a neighboring clock strike six.

"Let us have dinner at once," said Rodolphe. "I mean to begin from
tonight. Talking of dinner, it occurs to me that we lose much valuable
time every day in cooking ours; now time is money, so we must economize
it. From this day we will dine out."

"Yes," said Marcel, "there is a capital restaurant twenty steps off.
It's rather dear, but not far to go, so we shall gain in time what we
lose in money."

"We will go there today," said Rodolphe, "but tomorrow or next day we
will adopt a still more economical plan. Instead of going to the
restaurant, we will hire a cook."

"No, no," put in Marcel, "we will hire a servant to be cook and
everything. Just see the immense advantages which will result from it.
First of all, our rooms will be always in order; he will clean our
boots, go on errands, wash my brushes; I will even try and give him a
taste of the fine arts, and make him grind colors. In this way, we shall
save at least six hours a day."

Five minutes after, the two friends were installed in one of the little
rooms of the restaurant, and continuing their schemes of economy.

"We must get an intelligent lad," said Rodolphe, "if he has a sprinkling
of spelling, I will teach him to write articles, and make an editor of
him."

"That will be his resource for his old age," said Marcel, adding up the
bill. "Well, this is dear, rather! Fifteen francs! We used both to dine
for a franc and a half."

"Yes," replied Rodolphe, "but then we dined so badly that we were
obliged to sup at night. So, on the whole, it is an economy."

"You always have the best of the argument," muttered the convinced
artist. "Shall we work tonight?"

"No, indeed! I shall go to see my uncle. He is a good fellow, and will
give me good advice when I tell him my new position. And you, Marcel?"

"I shall go to Medicis to ask him if he has any restorations of pictures
to give me. By the way, give me five francs."

"For what?"

"To cross the Pont des Arts."

"Two sous to cross a bridge when you can go over another for nothing!
That is a useless expense; and, though an inconsiderable one, is a
violation of our rule."

"I am wrong, to be sure," said Marcel. "I will take a cab and go by the
Pont Neuf."

So the two friends quitted each other in opposite directions, but
somehow the different roads brought them to the same place, and they
didn't go home till morning.

Two days after, Rodolphe and Marcel were completely metamorphosed.
Dressed like two bridegrooms of the best society, they were so elegant,
and neat, and shining, that they hardly recognized each other when they
met in the street. Still their system of economy was in full blast,
though it was not without much difficulty that their "organization of
labor" had been realized. They had taken a servant; a big fellow
thirty-four years old, of Swiss descent, and about as clever as an
average donkey.

But Baptiste was not born to be a servant; he had a soul above his
business; and if one of his masters gave him a parcel to carry, he
blushed with indignation, and sent it by porter. However, he had some
merits; for instance, he could hash hare well and his first profession
having been that of distiller, he passed much of his time--or his
masters', rather--in trying to invent a new kind of liniment; he also
succeeded in the preparation of lamp-black. But where he was unrivalled
was in smoking Marcel's cigars and lighting them with Rodolphe's
manuscripts.

One day Marcel wanted to put Baptiste into costume, and make him sit for
Pharaoh in his "Passage of the Red Sea." To this proposition Baptiste
replied by a flat refusal, and demanded his wages.

"Very well," said Marcel, "I will settle with you tonight."

When Rodolphe returned, his friends declared that they must send away
Baptiste. "He is of no use to us at all."

"No, indeed--only an ornament, and not much of that."

"Awfully stupid."

"And equally lazy."

"We must turn him off."

"Let us!"

"Still, he has some good points. He hashes hare very well."

"And the lamp-black! He is a very Raphael for that."

"Yes, but that's all he is good for. We lose time arguing with him."

"He keeps us from working."

"He is the cause of my 'Passage' not being finished in time for the
Exhibition. He wouldn't sit for Pharaoh."

"Thanks to him, I couldn't finish my article in time. He wouldn't go to
the public library and hunt up the notes I wanted."

"He is ruining us."

"Decidedly we can't keep him."

"Send him away then! But we must pay him."

"That we'll do. Give me the money, and I will settle accounts with
him."

"Money! But it is not I who keeps the purse, but you."

"Not at all! It is you who are charged with the financial department."

"But I assure you," said Marcel, "I have no money."

"Can there be no more? It is impossible! We can't have spent five
hundred francs in eight days, especially living with the most rigid
economy as we have done, and confining ourselves to absolute
necessaries: [absolute superfluities, he should have said]. We must
look over our accounts; and we shall find where the mistake is."

"Yes, but we shan't find where the money is. However, let us see the
account-book, at any rate."

And this is the way they kept their accounts which had been begun under
the auspices of Saint Economy:

_"March 19. Received 500 francs. Paid, a Turkish pipe, 25 fr.; dinner,
15 fr.; sundries, 40 fr."_

"What are those sundries?" asked Rodolphe of Marcel, who was reading.

"You know very well," replied the other, "that night when we didn't go
home till morning. We saved fuel and candles by that."

"Well, afterwards?"

_"March 20. Breakfast, 1 fr. 50 c.; tobacco, 20 c.; dinner, 2 fr.; an
opera glass, 2 fr. 50 c._--that goes to your account. What did you want
a glass for? You see perfectly well."

"You know I had to give an account of the Exhibition in the 'Scarf of
Iris.' It is impossible to criticize paintings without a glass. The
expense is quite legitimate. Well?--"

"A bamboo cane--"

"Ah, that goes to your account," said Rodolphe. "You didn't want a
cane."

"That was all we spent the 20th," was Marcel's only answer. "The 21st we
breakfasted out, dined out, and supped out."

"We ought not to have spent much that day."

"Not much, in fact--hardly thirty francs."

"But what for?"

"I don't know; it's marked sundries."

"Vague and treacherous heading!"

"'21st. (The day that Baptiste came.) _5 francs to him on account of his
wages. 50 centimes to the organ man.'"_

"23rd. Nothing set down. 24th, ditto. Two good days!"

_"'25th. Baptiste, on account, 3 fr._ It seems to me we give him money
very often," said Marcel, by way of reflection.

"There will be less owing to him," said Rodolphe. "Go on!"

_"'26th. Sundries, useful in an artistic point of view, 36 fr.'"_

"What did we buy that was useful? I don't recollect. What can it have
been?"

"You don't remember! The day we went to the top of Notre Dame for a
bird's-eye view of Paris."

"But it costs only eight sous to go up the tower."

"Yes, but then we went to dine at Saint Germain after we came down."

"Clear as mud!"

"27th. Nothing to set down."

"Good! There's economy for you."

_"'28th. Baptiste, on account, 6 fr.'"_

"Now this time I am sure we owe Baptiste nothing more. Perhaps he is
even in our debt. We must see."

"29th. Nothing set down, except the beginning of an article on 'Social
Morals.'"

"30th. Ah! We had company at dinner--heavy expenses the 30th, 55 fr.
31st.--that's today--we have spent nothing yet. You see," continued
Marcel, "the account has been kept very carefully, and the total does
not reach five hundred francs."

"Then there ought to be money in the drawer."

"We can see," said Marcel, opening it.

"Anything there?"

"Yes, a spider."

    "A spider in the morning
     Of sorrow is a warning," hummed Rodolphe.

"Where the deuce has all the money gone?" exclaimed Marcel, totally
upset at the sight of the empty drawer.

"Very simple," replied Rodolphe. "Baptiste has had it all."

"Stop a minute!" cried Marcel, rummaging in the drawer, where he
perceived a paper. "The bill for last quarter's rent!"

"How did it come there?"

"And paid, too," added Marcel. "You paid the landlord, then!"

"Me! Come now!" said Rodolphe.

"But what means--"

"But I assure you--"

"Oh, what can be this mystery?" sang the two in chorus to the final air
of "The White Lady."

Baptiste, who loved music, came running in at once. Marcel showed him
the paper.

"Ah, yes," said Baptiste carelessly, "I forgot to tell you. The landlord
came this morning while you were out. I paid him, to save him the
trouble of coming back."

"Where did you find the money?"

"I took it out of the open drawer. I thought, sir, you had left it open
on purpose, and forgot to tell me to pay him, so I did just as if you
had told me."

"Baptiste!" said Marcel, in a white heat, "you have gone beyond your
orders. From this day you cease to form part of our household. Take off
your livery!"

Baptiste took off the glazed leather cap which composed his livery, and
handed it to Marcel.

"Very well," said the latter, "now you may go."

"And my wages?"

"Wages? You scamp! You have had fourteen francs in a little more than a
week. What do you do with so much money? Do you keep a dancer?"

"A rope dancer?" suggested Rodolphe.

"Then I am to be left," said the unhappy domestic, "without a covering
for my head!"

"Take your livery," said Marcel, moved in spite of himself, and he
restored the cap to Baptiste.

"Yet it is that wretch who has wrecked our fortunes," said Rodolphe,
seeing poor Baptiste go out. "Where shall we dine today?"

"We shall know tomorrow," replied Marcel.




CHAPTER VIII

THE COST OF A FIVE FRANC PIECE


One Saturday evening, at a time when he had not yet gone into
housekeeping with Mademoiselle Mimi, who will shortly make her
appearance, Rodolphe made the acquaintance at the table d'hote he
frequented of a ladies' wardrobe keeper, named Mademoiselle Laure.
Having learned that he was editor of "The Scarf of Iris" and of "The
Beaver," two fashion papers, the milliner, in hope of getting her goods
puffed, commenced a series of significant provocations. To these
provocations Rodolphe replied by a pyrotechnical display of madrigals,
sufficient to make Benserade, Voiture, and all other dealers in the
fireworks of gallantry jealous; and at the end of the dinner,
Mademoiselle Laure, having learned that he was a poet, gave him clearly
to understand that she was not indisposed to accept him as her Petrarch.
She even, without circumlocution, made an appointment with him for the
next day.

"By Jove," said Rodolphe to himself, as he saw Mademoiselle Laure home,
"this is certainly a very amiable young person. She seems to me to have
a good grammar and a tolerably extensive wardrobe. I am quite disposed
to make her happy."

On reaching the door of her house, Mademoiselle Laure relinquished
Rodolphe's arm, thanking him for the trouble he had taken in
accompanying her to such a remote locality.

"Oh! madame," replied Rodolphe, bowing to the ground, "I should like you
to have lived at Moscow or the islands of the Sound, in order to have
had the pleasure of being your escort the longer."

"That would be rather far," said Laure, affectedly.

"We could have gone by way of the Boulevards, madame," said Rodolphe.
"Allow me to kiss you hand in the shape of your cheek," he added,
kissing his companion on the lips before Laure could make any
resistance.

"Oh sir!" she exclaimed, "you go too fast."

"It is to reach my destination sooner," said Rodolphe. "In love, the
first stages should be ridden at a gallop."

"What a funny fellow," though the milliner, as she entered her dwelling.

"A pretty girl," said Rodolphe, as he walked away.

Returning home, he went to bed at once, and had the most delightful
dreams. He saw himself at balls, theaters, and public promenades with
Mademoiselle Laure on his arm, clad in dresses more magnificent than
those of the girl with the ass's skin of the fairy tale.

The next morning at eleven o'clock, according to habit, Rodolphe got up.
His first thought was for Mademoiselle Laure.

"She is a very well mannered woman," he murmured, "I feel sure that she
was brought up at Saint Denis. I shall at length realize the happiness
of having a mistress who is not pitted with the small-pox. Decidedly I
will make sacrifices for her. I will go and draw my screw at 'The Scarf
of Iris.' I will buy some gloves, and I will take Laure to dinner at a
restaurant where table napkins are in use. My coat is not up to much,"
said he as he dressed himself, "but, bah! black is good wear."

And he went out to go to the office of "The Scarf of Iris."

Crossing the street he came across an omnibus, on the side of which was
pasted a bill, with the words, "Display of Fountains at Versailles,
today, Sunday."

A thunderbolt falling at Rodolphe's feet would not have produced a
deeper impression upon him than the sight of this bill.

"Today, Sunday! I had forgotten it," he exclaimed. "I shall not be able
to get any money. Today, Sunday!!! All the spare coin in Paris is on its
way to Versailles."

However, impelled by one of those fabulous hopes to which a man always
clings, Rodolphe hurried to the office of the paper, reckoning that some
happy chance might have taken the cashier there.

Monsieur Boniface had, indeed, looked in for a moment, but had left at
once.

"For Versailles," said the office messenger to Rodolphe.

"Come," said Rodolphe, "it is all over!... But let me see," he thought,
"my appointment is for this evening. It is noon, so I have five hours to
find five francs in--twenty sous an hour, like the horses in the Bois du
Boulogne. Forward."

As he found himself in a neighborhood where the journalist, whom he
styled the influential critic, resided, Rodolphe thought of having a try
at him.

"I am sure to find him in," said he, as he ascended the stairs, "it is
the day he writes his criticism--there is no fear of his being out. I
will borrow five francs of him."

"Hallo! it's you, is it?" said the journalist, on seeing Rodolphe. "You
come at the right moment. I have a slight service to ask of you."

"How lucky it falls out," thought the editor of "The Scarf of Iris."

"Were you at the Odeon Theater last night?"

"I am always at the Odeon."

"You have seen the new piece, then?"

"Who else would have seen it? I am the Odeon audience."

"That is true," said the critic, "you are one of the caryatides of the
theater. It is even rumored that it is you who finds the money for its
subvention. Well, that is what I want of you, a summary of the plot of
the new piece."

"That is easy, I have the memory of a creditor."

"Whom is this piece by?" asked the critic of Rodolphe, whilst the latter
was writing.

"A gentleman."

"It cannot be up to much."

"Well, it is not as strong as a Turk."

"Then it cannot be very robust. The Turks, you see, have usurped a
reputation for strength. Besides, there are no longer any Turks except
at masked balls and in the Champs-Elysees where they sell dates. One of
my friends knows the East and he assures me that all the natives of it
were born in the Rue Coquenard."

"That is smart," said Rodolphe.

"You think so?" observed the critic, "I will put it in my article."

"Here is my analysis of the piece, it is to the point," resumed
Rodolphe.

"Yes, but it is short."

"By putting in dashes and developing your critical opinion it will fill
some space."

"I have scarcely time, my dear fellow, and then my critical opinion will
not fill enough space either."

"You can stick in an adjective at every third word."

"Cannot you tail on to your analysis a little, or rather a long
criticism of the piece, eh?" asked the critic.

"Humph," said Rodolphe. "I have certainly some opinions upon tragedy,
but I have printed them three times in 'The Beaver' and 'The Scarf of
Iris.'"

"No matter, how many lines do your opinions fill?"

"Forty lines."

"The deuce, you have strong opinions. Well, lend me your forty lines."

"Good," thought Rodolphe, "if I turn out twenty francs' worth of copy
for him he cannot refuse me five. I must warn you," said he to the
critic, "that my opinions are not quite novel. They are rather worn at
the elbows. Before printing them I yelled them in every cafe in Paris,
there is not a waiter who does not know them by heart."

"What does that matter to me? You surely do not know me. Is there
anything new in the world except virtue?"

"Here you are," said Rodolphe, as he finished.

"Thunder and tempests, there is still nearly a column wanting. How is
this chasm to be filled?" exclaimed the critic. "Since you are here
supply me with some paradoxes."

"I have not any about me," said Rodolphe, "though I can lend you some.
Only they are not mine, I bought them for half a franc from one of my
friends who was in distress. They have seen very little use as yet."

"Very good," said the critic.

"Ah!" said Rodolphe to himself, setting to write again. "I shall
certainly ask him for ten francs, just now paradoxes are as dear as
partridges." And he wrote some thirty lines containing nonsense about
pianos, goldfish and Rhine wine, which was called toilet wine just as
we speak of toilet vinegar.

"It is very good," said the critic. "Now do me the favor to add that the
place where one meets more honest folk than anywhere else is the
galleys."

"Why?"

"To fill a couple of lines. Good, now it is finished," said the
influential critic, summoning his servant to take the article to the
printers.

"And now," thought Rodolphe, "let us strike home." And he gravely
proposed his request.

"Ah! my dear fellow," said the critic, "I have not a sou in the place.
Lolette ruins me in pommade, and just now she stripped me of my last
copper to go to Versailles and see the Nereids and the brazen monsters
spout forth the floods."

"To Versailles. But it is an epidemic!" exclaimed Rodolphe.

"But why do you want money?"

"That is my story," replied Rodolphe, "I have at five this evening an
appointment with a lady, a very well bred lady who never goes out save
in an omnibus. I wish to unite my fortunes with hers for a few days, and
it appears to me the right thing to enable her to take the pleasures of
this life. For dinner, dances, &c., &c., I must have five francs, and if
I do not find them French literature is dishonoured in my person."

"Why don't you borrow the sum of the lady herself?" exclaimed the
critic.

"The first time of meeting, it is hardly possible. Only you can get me
out of this fix."

"By all the mummies of Egypt I give you my word of honor that I have not
enough to buy a sou pipe. However, I have some books that you can sell."

"Impossible today, Mother Mansut's, Lebigre's, and all the shops on the
quays and in the Rue Saint Jacques are closed. What books are they?
Volumes of poetry with a portrait of the author in spectacles? But such
things never sell."

"Unless the author is criminally convicted," said the critic. "Wait a
bit, here are some romances and some concert tickets. By setting about
it skillfully you may, perhaps, make money of them."

"I would rather have something else, a pair of trowsers, for instance."

"Come," said the critic, "take this copy of Bossuet and this plaster
cast of Monsieur Odilon Barrot. On my word of honor, it is the widow's
mite."

"I see that you are doing your best," said Rodolphe. "I will take away
these treasures, but if I get thirty sous out of them I shall regard it
as the thirteenth labor of Hercules."

After having covered about four leagues Rodolphe, by the aid of an
eloquence of which he had the secret on great occasions, succeeded in
getting his washerwoman to lend him two francs on the volumes of poetry,
the romances and the bust of Monsieur Barrot.

"Come," said he, as he recrossed the Seine, "here is the sauce, now I
must find the dish itself. Suppose I go to my uncle."

Half an hour later he was at his Uncle Monetti's, who read upon his
nephew's face what was the matter. Hence he put himself on guard and
forestalled any request by a series of complaints, such as:

"Times are hard, bread is dear, debtors do not pay up, rents are
terribly high, commerce decaying, &c., &c.," all the hypocritical litany
of shopkeepers.

"Would you believe it," said the uncle, "that I have been forced to
borrow money from my shopman to meet a bill?"

"You should have sent to me," said Rodolphe. "I would have lent it you,
I received two hundred francs three days ago."

"Thanks, my lad," said the uncle, "but you have need of your fortune.
Ah! whilst you are here, you might, you who write such a good hand, copy
out some bills for me that I want to send out."

"My five francs are going to cost me dear," said Rodolphe to himself,
setting about the task, which he condensed.

"My dear uncle," said he to Monetti, "I know how fond you are of music
and I have brought you some concert tickets."

"You are very kind, my boy. Will you stay to dinner?"

"Thanks, uncle, but I am expected at dinner in the Faubourg Saint
Germain, indeed, I am rather put out about it for I have not time to run
home and get the money to buy gloves."

"You have no gloves, shall I lend you mine?" said his uncle.

"Thanks, we do not take the same size, only you would greatly oblige me
by the loan of--"

"Twenty nine sous to buy a pair? Certainly, my boy, here you are. When
one goes into society one should be well dressed. Better be envied than
pitied, as your aunt used to say. Come, I see you are getting on in the
world, so much the better. I would have given you more," he went on,
"but it is all I have in the till. I should have to go upstairs and I
cannot leave the shop, customers drop in every moment."

"You were saying that business was not flourishing?"

Uncle Monetti pretended not to hear, and said to his nephew who was
pocketing the twenty nine sous:

"Do not be in a hurry about repayment."

"What a screw," said Rodolphe, bolting. "Ah!" he continued, "there are
still thirty-one sous lacking. Where am I to find them? I know, let's be
off to the crossroads of Providence."

This was the name bestowed by Rodolphe on the most central point in
Paris, that is to say, the Palais Royal, a spot where it is almost
impossible to remain ten minutes without meeting ten people of one's
acquaintance, creditors above all. Rodolphe therefore went and stationed
himself at the entrance to the Palais Royal. This time Providence was
long in coming. At last Rodolphe caught sight of it. Providence had a
white hat, a green coat, and a gold headed cane--a well dressed
Providence.

It was a rich and obliging fellow, although a phalansterian.

"I am delighted to see you," said he to Rodolphe, "come and walk a
little way with me; we can have a talk."

"So I am to have the infliction of the phalanstere," murmured Rodolphe,
suffering himself to be led away from the wearer of the white hat, who,
indeed, phalanstered him to the utmost.

As they drew near the Pont des Arts Rodolphe said to his companion--

"I must leave you, not having sufficient to pay the toll."

"Nonsense," said the other, catching hold of Rodolphe and throwing two
sous to the toll keeper.

"This is the right moment," thought the editor of "The Scarf of Iris,"
as they crossed the bridge. Arrived at the further end in front of the
clock of the Institute, Rodolphe stopped short, pointed to the dial
with a despairing gesture, and exclaimed:--

"Confound it all, a quarter to five! I am done for."

"What is the matter?" cried his astonished friend.

"The matter is," said Rodolphe, "that, thanks to your dragging me here
in spite of myself, I have missed an appointment."

"An important one?"

"I should think so; money that I was to call for at five o'clock
at--Batignolles. I shall never be able to get there. Hang it; what am I
to do?"

"Why," said the phalansterian, "nothing is simpler; come home with me
and I will lend you some."

"Impossible, you live at Montrouge, and I have business at six o'clock
at the Chaussee d'Antin. Confound it."

"I have a trifle about me," said Providence, timidly, "but it is very
little."

"If I had enough to take a cab I might get to Batignolles in time."

"Here is the contents of my purse, my dear fellow, thirty one sous."

"Give it to me at once, that I may bolt," said Rodolphe, who had just
heard five o'clock strike, and who hastened off to keep his appointment.

"It has been hard to get," said he, counting out his money. "A hundred
sous exactly. At last I am supplied, and Laure will see that she has to
do with a man who knows how to do things properly. I won't take a
centime home this evening. We must rehabilitate literature, and prove
that its votaries only need money to be wealthy."

Rodolphe found Mademoiselle Laure at the trysting place.

"Good," said he, "for punctuality she is a feminine chronometer."

He spent the evening with her, and bravely melted down his five francs
in the crucible of prodigality. Mademoiselle Laure was charmed with his
manners, and was good enough only to notice that Rodolphe had not
escorted her home at the moment when he was ushering her into his own
room.

"I am committing a fault," said she. "Do not make me repent of it by the
ingratitude which is characteristic of your sex."

"Madame," said Rodolphe, "I am known for my constancy. It is such that
all my friends are astonished at my fidelity, and have nicknamed me the
General Bertrand of Love."




CHAPTER IX

THE WHITE VIOLETS


About this time Rodolphe was very much in love with his cousin Angela,
who couldn't bear him; and the thermometer was twelve degrees below
freezing point.

Mademoiselle Angela was the daughter of Monsieur Monetti, the chimney
doctor, of whom we have already had occasion to speak. She was eighteen
years old, and had just come from Burgundy, where she lived five years
with a relative who was to leave her all her property. This relative was
an old lady who had never been young apparently--certainly never
handsome, but had always been very ill-natured, although--or perhaps
because--very superstitious. Angela, who at her departure was a charming
child, and promised to be a charming girl, came back at the end of the
five years a pretty enough young lady, but cold, dry, and uninteresting.
Her secluded provincial life, and the narrow and bigoted education she
had received, had filled her mind with vulgar prejudices, shrunk her
imagination, and converted her heart into a sort of organ, limited to
fulfilling its function of physical balance wheel. You might say that
she had holy water in her veins instead of blood. She received her
cousin with an icy reserve; and he lost his time whenever he attempted
to touch the chord of her recollections--recollections of the time when
they had sketched out that flirtation in the Paul-and-Virginia style
which is traditional between cousins of different sexes. Still Rodolphe
was very much in love with his cousin Angela, who couldn't bear him; and
learning one day that the young lady was going shortly to the wedding
ball of one of her friends, he made bold to promise Angela a bouquet of
violets for the ball. And after asking permission of her father, Angela
accepted her cousin's gallant offer--always on condition that the
violets should be white.

Overjoyed at his cousin's amiability, Rodolphe danced and sang his way
back to Mount St. Bernard, as he called his lodging--why will be seen
presently. As he passed by a florist's in crossing the Palais Royal, he
saw some white violets in the showcase, and was curious enough to ask
their price. A presentable bouquet could not be had for less than ten
francs; there were some that cost more.

"The deuce!" exclaimed Rodolphe, "ten francs! and only eight days to
find this fortune! It will be a hard pull, but never mind, my cousin
shall have her flowers."

This happened in the time of Rodolphe's literary genesis, as the
transcendentalists would say. His only income at that period was an
allowance of fifteen francs a month, made him by a friend, who, after
living a long while in Paris as a poet, had, by the help of influential
acquaintances, gained the mastership of a provincial school. Rodolphe,
who was the child of prodigality, always spent his allowance in four
days; and, not choosing to abandon his holy but not very profitable
profession of elegiac poet, lived for the rest of the month on the rare
droppings from the basket of Providence. This long Lent had no terrors
for him; he passed through it gaily, thanks to his stoical temperament
and to the imaginary treasures which he expended every day while
waiting for the first of the month, that Easter which terminated his
fast. He lived at this time at the very top of one of the loftiest
houses in Paris. His room was shaped like a belvidere, and was a
delicious habitation in summer, but from October to April a perfect
little Kamschatka. The four cardinal winds which penetrated by the four
windows,--there was one on each of the four sides--made fearful music in
it throughout the cold seasons. Then in irony as it were, there was a
huge fireplace, the immense chimney of which seemed a gate of honor
reserved for Boreas and his retinue. On the first attack of cold,
Rodolphe had recourse to an original system of warming; he cut up
successively what little furniture he had, and at the end of a week his
stock was considerably abridged; in fact, he had only a bed and two
chairs left; it should be remarked that these items were insured against
fire by their nature, being of iron. This manner of heating himself he
called _moving up the chimney_.

It was January, and the thermometer, which indicated twelve degrees
below freezing point on the Spectacle Quay, would have stood two or
three lower if moved to the belvidere, which Rodolphe called
indifferently Mount St. Bernard, Spitzenberg, and Siberia.

The night when he promised his cousin the white violets, he was seized
with a great rage on returning home; the four cardinal winds, in playing
puss-in-the-corner round his chamber, had broken a pane of glass--the
third time in a fortnight. After exploding in a volley of frantic
imprecations upon Eolus and all his family, and plugging up the breach
with a friend's portrait, Rodolphe lay down, dressed as he was, between
his two mattresses, and dreamed of white violets all night.

At the end of five days, Rodolphe had found nothing to help him toward
realizing his dreams. He must have the bouquet the day after tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the thermometer fell still lower, and the luckless poet was
ready to despair as he thought the violets might have risen higher.
Finally his good angel had pity on him, and came to his relief as
follows.

One morning, Rodolphe went to take his chance of getting a breakfast
from his friend Marcel the painter, and found him conversing with a
woman in mourning. It was a widow who had just lost her husband, and who
wanted to know how much it would cost to paint on the tomb which she had
erected, a man's hand, with this inscription beneath:

    "I WAIT FOR HER TO WHOM MY FAITH WAS PLIGHTED."

To get the work at a cheaper rate, she observed to the artist that when
she was called to rejoin her husband, he would have another hand to
paint--her hand with a bracelet on the wrist and the supplementary line
beneath:

    "AT LENGTH, BEHOLD US THUS ONCE MORE UNITED."

"I shall put this clause in my will," she said, "and require that the
task be intrusted to you."

"In that case, madame," replied the artist, "I will do it at the price
you offer--but only in the hope of seeing your hand. Don't go and forget
me in your will."

"I should like to have this as soon as possible," said the disconsolate
one, "nevertheless, take your time to do it well and don't forget the
scar on the thumb. I want a living hand."

"Don't be afraid, madame, it shall be a speaking one," said Marcel, as
he bowed the widow out. But hardly had she crossed the threshold when
she returned, saying, "I have one more thing to ask you, sir: I should
like to have inscribed on my husband's tomb something in verse which
would tell of his good conduct and his last words. Is that good style?"

"Very good style--they call that an epitaph--the very best style."

"You don't know anyone who would do that for me cheap? There is my
neighbor Monsieur Guerin, the public writer, but he asks the clothes off
my back."

Here Rodolphe looked at Marcel, who understood him at once.

"Madame," said the artist, pointing to Rodolphe, "a happy fortune has
conducted hither the very person who can be of service to you in this
mournful juncture. This gentleman is a renowned poet; you couldn't find
a better one."

"I want something very melancholy," said the widow, "and the spelling
all right."

"Madame," replied Marcel, "my friend spells like a book. He had all the
prizes at school."

"Indeed!" said the widow, "my grand-nephew had just had a prize too; he
is only seven years old."

"A very forward child, madame."

"But are you sure that the gentleman can make very melancholy verses?"

"No one better, madame, for he has undergone much sorrow in his life.
The papers always find fault with his verses for being too melancholy."

"What!" cried the widow, "do they talk about him in the papers? He must
know quite as much, then, as Monsieur Guerin, the public writer."

"And a great deal more. Apply to him, madame, and you will not repent of
it."

After having explained to Rodolphe the sort of inscription in verse
which she wished to place on her husband's tomb, the widow agreed to
give Rodolphe ten francs if it suited her--only she must have it very
soon. The poet promised she should have it the very next day.

"Oh good genius of Artemisia!" cried Rodolphe as the widow disappeared.
"I promise you that you shall be suited--full allowance of melancholy
lyrics, better got up than a duchess, orthography and all. Good old
lady! May Heaven reward you with a life of a hundred and seven
years--equal to that of a good brandy!"

"I object," said Marcel.

"That's true," said Rodolphe, "I forgot that you have her hand to paint,
and that so long a life would make you lose money." And lifting his
hands he gravely ejaculated, "Heaven, do not grant my prayer! Ah!" he
continued, "I was in jolly good luck to come here."

"By the way," asked Marcel, "what did you want?"

"I recollect--and now especially that I have to pass the night in making
these verses, I cannot do without what I came to ask you for, namely,
first, some dinner; secondly, tobacco and a candle; thirdly, your
polar-bear costume."

"To go to the masked ball?"

"No, indeed, but as you see me here, I am as much frozen up as the grand
army in retreat from Russia. Certainly my green frock-coat and
Scotch-plaid trowsers are very pretty, but much too summery; they would
do to live under the equator; but for one who lodges near the pole, as I
do, a white bear skin is more suitable; indeed I may say necessary."

"Take the fur!" said Marcel, "it's a good idea; warm as a dish of
charcoal; you will be like a roll in an oven in it."

Rodolphe was already inside the animal's skin.

"Now," said he, "the thermometer is going to be really mad."

"Are you going out so?" said Marcel to his friend, after they had
finished an ambiguous repast served in a penny dish.

"I just am," replied Rodolphe. "Do you think I care for public opinion?
Besides, today is the beginning of carnival."

He went half over Paris with all the gravity of the beast whose skin he
occupied. Only on passing before a thermometer in an optician's window
he couldn't help taking a sight at it.

Having returned home not without causing great terror to his porter,
Rodolphe lit his candle, carefully surrounding it with an extempore
shade of paper to guard it against the malice of the winds, and set to
work at once. But he was not long in perceiving that if his body was
almost entirely protected from the cold, his hands were not; a terrible
numbness seized his fingers which let the pen fall.

"The bravest man cannot struggle against the elements," said the poet,
falling back helpless in his chair. "Caeser passed the Rubicon, but he
could not have passed the Beresina."

All at once he uttered a cry of joy from the depths of his bear-skin
breast, and jumped up so suddenly as to overturn some of his ink on its
snowy fur. He had an idea!

Rodolphe drew from beneath his bed a considerable mass of papers, among
which were a dozen huge manuscripts of his famous drama, "The Avenger."
This drama, on which he had spent two years, had been made, unmade, and
remade so often that all the copies together weighed fully fifteen
pounds. He put the last version on one side, and dragged the others
towards the fireplace.

"I was sure that with patience I should dispose of it somehow," he
exclaimed. "What a pretty fagot! If I could have foreseen what would
happen, I could have written a prologue, and then I should have more
fuel tonight. But one can't foresee everything." He lit some leaves of
the manuscript, in the flame of which he thawed his hands. In five
minutes the first act of "The Avenger" was over, and Rodolphe had
written three verses of his epitaph.

It would be impossible to describe the astonishment of the four winds
when they felt fire in the chimney.

"It's an illusion," quoth Boreas, as he amused himself by brushing back
the hair of Rodolphe's bear skin.

"Let's blow down the pipe," suggested another wind, "and make the
chimney smoke." But just as they were about to plague the poor poet, the
south wind perceived Monsieur Arago at a window of the Observatory
threatening them with his finger; so they all made off, for fear of
being put under arrest. Meanwhile the second act of "The Avenger" was
going off with immense success, and Rodolphe had written ten lines. But
he only achieved two during the third act.

"I always thought that third act too short," said Rodolphe, "luckily the
next one will take longer; there are twenty three scenes in it,
including the great one of the throne." As the last flourish of the
throne scene went up the chimney in fiery flakes, Rodolphe had only
three couplets more to write. "Now for the last act. This is all
monologue. It may last five minutes." The catastrophe flashed and
smouldered, and Rodolphe in a magnificent transport of poetry had
enshrined in lyric stanzas the last words of the illustrious deceased.
"There is enough left for a second representation," said he, pushing the
remainder of the manuscript under his bed.

At eight o'clock next evening, Mademoiselle Angela entered the ballroom;
in her hand was a splendid nosegay of white violets, and among them two
budding roses, white also. During the whole night men and women were
complimenting the young girl on her bouquet. Angela could not but feel a
little grateful to her cousin who had procured this little triumph for
her vanity; and perhaps she would have thought more of him but for the
gallant persecutions of one of the bride's relatives who had danced
several times with her. He was a fair-haired youth, with a magnificent
moustache curled up at the ends, to hook innocent hearts. The bouquet
had been pulled to pieces by everybody; only two white roses were left.
The young man asked Angela for them; she refused--only to forget them
after the ball on a bench, whence the young fair-haired youth hastened
to take them.

At that moment it was fourteen degrees below freezing point in
Rodolphe's belvidere. He was leaning against his window looking out at
the lights in the ballroom, where his cousin Angela, who didn't care for
him, was dancing.




CHAPTER X

THE CAPE OF STORMS


In the opening month of each of the four seasons there are some
terrible epochs, usually about the 1st and the 15th. Rodolphe, who could
not witness the approach of one or the other of these two dates without
alarm, nicknamed them the Cape of Storms. On these mornings it is not
Aurora who opens the portals of the East, but creditors, landlords,
bailiffs and their kidney. The day begins with a shower of bills and
accounts and winds up with a hailstorm of protests. _Dies irae_.

Now one morning, it was the 15th of April, Rodolphe was peacefully
slumbering--and dreaming that one of his uncles had just bequeathed him
a whole province in Peru, the feminine inhabitants included.

W

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