Bohemians of the Latin Quarter Part 15

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," "Cla.s.sic School," and "Romantic School."

The ladies were to occupy a s.p.a.ce 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 t.i.tle 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 pa.s.sion. 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 gla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+rt?"

"Does that shock custom?" observed Marcel quietly.

"Shock custom, it stuns it."

"The deuce," said Marcel, looking at his s.h.i.+rt, 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' b.u.t.tons 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, G.o.d wills it and my tailor too; besides it has a new set of b.u.t.tons 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 Inst.i.tute 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.