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"The image of those ideal beings shone on every man who was twenty-one about 1848. 'La Vie de Boheme' was youth's breviary fifty years ago."
All that kept it from blowing away was the tense if sprawling fingers of his right hand; his left hung limply at his side. It was not possible. Such things did not happen these unromantic days to musical celebrities. She had written that on Monday night she would sing in La Bohème and on Wednesday, Faust. She had since vanished, vanished as completely as though she had taken wings and flown away.
Along with ruined roues of questionable means of support and questionable antecedents, along with the foul and adventures-seeking dregs of the bourgeoisie, there were vagabonds, dismissed soldiers, discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves, sharpers, jugglers, lazzaroni, pickpockets, sleight-of-hand performers, gamblers, procurers, keepers of disorderly houses, porters, literati, organ grinders, rag pickers, scissors grinders, tinkers, beggars in short, that whole undefined, dissolute, kicked-about mass that the Frenchmen style "la Boheme" With this kindred element, Bonaparte formed the stock of the "Society of December 10," a "benevolent association" in so far as, like Bonaparte himself, all its members felt the need of being benevolent to themselves at the expense of the toiling nation.
The supper party was at the Cafe de Boheme, which was an Aladdin's palace buried underground beneath a building in the "Tenderloin". Fountains splashed in marble basins, and birds sang amid the branches of tropical flowering trees, while on a little stage a man in the costume and character of a Paris apache sang a song of ferocious cynicism.
"I thought it would pass the time," said Philip. "If you find it long you needn't bother about me, you know. I don't mind being left alone." At that moment two men passed, in brown velveteens, enormous trousers, and basque caps. They were young, but both wore beards. "I say, are those art-students?" said Philip. "They might have stepped out of the Vie de Boheme."
So everything has to suit itself to its own time Bohemianism with the rest. One essential quality there is, however, in this Vie de Boheme that will never alter. It demands that those who live it, shall be careless of the morrow; it expects an absolute liberty of soul, let manners and conditions be what they may. You will still find that; you will always find it.
So they sprang into a waiting fiacre, and were dragged up the steep, stone-paved hill to the heights, where La Bohême still reigns, though the glory of Moulin Rouge has departed and the trail of the tourist is over all. They found Montmartre very much en fête.
But he was sure anybody would far rather sit and chatter with him, or hear him play a valse on the piano, or a bit of the "Boheme," than bend over a table all by himself. And Artois always welcomed him. He liked him. But it was not only that which made him complaisant. Doro was a type, and a singularly perfect one.
He may have been superseded by this time. I do not know. I was paying no attention, but the name Meline struck me. It recalled, I do not exactly know why, the 'Scenes de la vie de boheme'. I thought it was about some grisette. That shows how scraps of the speech entered my mind.
They were both prodigies, but, though rivals, the fastest friends. After they had emerged from the École Normale they went and set up housekeeping together in an old house in the Quartier Latin; and as they were both poor as rats, the difficulties they had in keeping soul and body together recall the most picturesque and thrilling scenes in Murger's Vie de Bohème.
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