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Via de Boheme

HowThe Bohemian Club Was Formed – part 23 (of 24). The story so far … homeless Parisian artist and musician Alexandre Schaunard has been looking for a change of fortune. He meets a philosopher, Gustave Colline, and later two gentlemen, M. Mouton and M. Rodolphe. Schaunard, forgetting he is homeless, invites everyone back to his lodgings, only to discover Marcel, a new tenant, in occupation. After much confusion they share dinner with Marcel, who next morning invites his new friends to lunch. Marcel eventually invites Schaunard to share his lodgings with him …

Colline and Rodolphe returned, having met on their way back. Marcel and Schaunard told them of their agreement.
 ‘Gentlemen,’ said Rodolphe, rattling the coins in his pocket, ‘I invite the company to dinner.’
 ‘Exactly what I was about to have the honour to propose,’ said Colline, extracting a gold piece from his pocket and using it as a monocle.  
 ‘My prince gave me this to buy a Hindustani-Arabic grammar, which I have bought for six sous, cash down.’
 ‘I obtained an advance of thirty francs from the cashier of The Scarf of Iris,’ said Rodolphe, ‘on the pretext that I needed to be vaccinated.’
 ‘A day of affluence,’ said Schaunard. ‘I’m the only one who’s had no windfall: it’s humiliating.’
 ‘Meanwhile, I repeat my invitation to dinner,’ said Rodolphe.
 ‘So do I,’ said Colline.
 ‘Well then,’ said Rodolphe, ‘we’ll toss, heads or tails, to see who pays.’
 ‘No, no,’ said Schaunard, ‘I have a better idea; a far better idea, which will spare you embarrassment.’
 ‘Let’s have it.’
 ‘Rodolphe pays for the dinner, and Colline invites us all to supper.’
 ‘That’s what I’d call a judgment of Solomon,’ said the philosopher.
 ‘Worse than the Feast of Gamacho,’ said Marcel.
 The dinner was held in a Provencal restaurant on the Rue Dauphine, noted for its literary waiters and its ailloli. Seeing that it was necessary to leave room for supper, they ate and drank in moderation. The acquaintance struck up the previous night between Colline and Schaunard, and later with Marcel, became more intimate. Each of the four young men hoisted the flag of his own artistic opinions. All four realised that they had equal courage and similar ambitions. As they gossiped and argued, they realised that their sympathies were in common, that the wits of all four were equally adapted to the kind of humorous fencing that enlivens without hurting, and that their hearts, filled with all the fair virtues of youth, could easily be stirred by the sight or sound of beauty. All these four, having started from the same point to arrive at the same goal, thought that their meeting was due to something other than the common give-and-take of chance, and that it might well be Providence herself, nature’s guardian of the forsaken, who had thus brought them together, hand unto hand, and was now whispering to them the Gospel’s bidding: ‘Help and love one another.’ [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 Dodie Masterman.

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