Bohemia Village Voice

      The missive, written on the official paper of the War Ministry, carried by a dragoon as an urgent despatch, and for which M. Durand had given the Government a formal receipt, read as follows:

SIR AND LANDLORD,

Politeness, which, if mythology is to be believed, is the grandson of good manners, obliges me to inform you that I find myself under the cruel necessity of being entirely unable to conform to the custom of paying one’s rent – especially when it is due. Until this morning I had nurtured the hope of being able to celebrate this delightful day by settling the three instalments of rent with which I am in arrears. Chimera! Whilst I slumbered on the pillow of assurance, ill-luck – in Greek, anake – was shattering my hopes. The receipts up which I was reckoning – heavens, how bad business is, these days! – have remained outstanding, and of the considerable sums of which I expected to dispose I have as yet received only three francs; which I have borrowed, and do not offer to you. Better days will come for our fair country and for myself – do not doubt it sir! As soon as they do, I shall take wings to inform you, and to extract from your house the valuables that I have left there; which I place under your protection, and under that of the law, which forbids you to traffic in them before the expiration of a year – lest you should wish to try to do so in order to recover the sums with which you are credited in the ledger of my integrity. I recommend to your special care my piano, and the large frame containing sixty locks of hair whose varying colours traverse the whole gamut of the capillary spectrum, and which were raped from the brow of the Graces by the scalpel of love.

     The ceilings and canopies beneath which I dwelt are therefore, sir and landlord, at your disposal; as witness my consent, hereunder attested with my blood.

ALEXANDRE SCHAUNARD   

To be continued …

[Vie de Bohème by Henry Mürger, a vivid portrait of the ‘Bohemian’ life of the artistic quarter of Paris in the nineteenth century was originally published (by Michel Lévy) in 1851. The extract above is taken from a translation by Norman Cameron, published by Hamish Hamilton. The illustration is by Dodi Masterman.]