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See here, Captain Berselius is paying for my guns; they are his, part of the expedition I want this as my own, and I'll pay you for her out of my own pocket. How much is she?" Schaunard, whose fifty years of trading had explained to him the fact that when an American takes a whim into his head it is best for all parties to let him have his own way, ran his fingers through his beard.
Philip began to read Murger's fascinating, ill-written, absurd masterpiece, and fell at once under its spell. His soul danced with joy at that picture of starvation which is so good-humoured, of squalor which is so picturesque, of sordid love which is so romantic, of bathos which is so moving. Rodolphe and Mimi, Musette and Schaunard!
"And now," said he, opening the door as Adams was taking his departure, "I will give you one more piece of advice about this expedition. It is a piece of private advice, and I will trust you not to tell the Captain that I gave it to you." "Yes. What is the advice?" "Don't go." Adams laughed as he turned on his heel, and Schaunard laughed as he closed the door.
Now listen to me, for it is old Schaunard of the Rue de la Paix who is speaking to you. The man you would expose, as you term it, is a king to begin with; to go on with, he is far and away the cleverest king in Christendom. That man has brains enough to run what you in America call a department store.
"Ah!" said he, "here's a gun worth shooting with." Schaunard looked on with admiration at the giant handling the gigantic gun. "Oh, for you," said he, "it's all very well. Ma foi, but you suit one another, you both are of another day." "God bless you," said Adams, "you can pick me up by the bushel in the States. I'm small. Say, how much is this thing?" "That!" cried Schaunard.
"The thing has no price," said he. "It is a curiosity. But if you must have it well, I will let you have it for two hundred francs." "Done," said Adams. "Have you any cartridges?" "Oh, yes," replied Schaunard. "Heaps. That is to say, I have the old cartridges, and I can have a couple of hundred of them emptied and re-filled and percussioned. Ah, well, monsieur, you must have your own way.
At the same time, if he be at all after my pattern, he is perhaps supported by a childish satisfaction: this is life at last, he may tell himself, this is the real thing; the bladders on which I was set swimming are now empty, my own weight depends upon the ocean; by my own exertions I must perish or succeed; and I am now enduring in the vivid fact, what I so much delighted to read of in the case of Lonsteau or Lucien, Rodolphe or Schaunard.
The bladders on which I was set swimming are now empty; my own weight depends upon the ocean; by my own exertions I must perish or succeed; and I am now enduring, in the vivid fact, what I so much delighted to read of in the case of Lousteau or Lucien, Rodolphe or Schaunard." Of the steps of my misery I cannot tell at length. But my misfortune befell me at an awkward juncture.
The same business, you may say, or there and thereabout, was being privately enacted in consequence in every garret of the neighbourhood, and a good third of the students were consciously impersonating Rodolphe or Schaunard, to their own incommunicable satisfaction. Some of us went far, and some farther.
Armand opened a case, and the deft hand of the old man took down a double-barrelled cordite rifle, light-looking and of exquisite workmanship. "These are the guns we shoot elephants with nowadays," said Schaunard, handling the weapon lovingly. "A child could carry it, and there is nothing living it will not kill."
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