'Man is a transitory creature.' 'Love is a nice thing.' Finally, he made Schaunard his confidant, and related to him how he had put into mahogany '* a damsel named Euphemia. Of this young person he drew so detailed a portrait, that Schaunard began to be assailed by a fearful suspicion, which suspicion was reduced to a certainty when the landlord showed him a letter. 'Cruel woman!' cried the musician, as he beheld the signature; 'it is like a dagger in my heart.' 'I have furnished a little entre-sol for her,' said the landlord; 'pretty, very pretty; it cost me lots of money. But such love is beyond price; and I have twenty thousand francs a year. She asks me for money in her letter. Poor little dear, she shall have this-hullo! where is it?' The money had disappeared. 6 It is impossible for a moral man to become an accomplice in such wickedness,' said Marcel. 'My conscience forbids me to pay money to this old profligate.'† By this time the landlord was completely gone, and talked at random to the bottles. He had been there nearly two hours, and his wife, alarmed at his prolonged absence, sent the maid after him. On seeing her master in such a state, she set up a shriek and asked 'what they had been doing to him?' 6 Nothing,' answered Marcel; 'he came a few minutes ago to ask for the rent. As we had no money, (there was none visible now,) we begged for time.' 'But he's been and drunked himself,' said the servant. 'Very likely,' replied Rodolphe; the most of that was done before he came here. He told us that he had been arranging his cellar.' 'Good heavens! what will Missus say?' exclaimed the maid, leading, or rather dragging off her master, who had a very imperfect idea of the use of his legs. 'So much for him!' ejaculated Marcel. 'He has smelt money,' said Rodolphe; he will come again to morrow.' When he does, I will threaten to tell his wife about Phemy, and he will give us time enough.' The four friends re-commenced drinking and smoking. CHAPTER TWELVE-AND LAST BY THE TRANSLATOR. THE adventurous reader who has kept up with the sayings and doings of civilized gypsy-dom, may perhaps have suspected occasional, or more than occasional gaps and erasures in our narrative. Such, indeed, is the case; and now that we are arrived at the latter half of the book, it is really impossible for us to go any farther. Not so much for fear of shocking the puritanically disposed by any too spicy details — although there are a good many passages which would read rather oddly in English but from our own sense of self-respect and of respect for art, which revolts at a wanton profanation of sentiment. For, to take the *Furnished an apartment for. + What a good anti-renter MARCEL would have made! first omitted chapter as a specimen, a young man, under the impulse of sheer animal passion, attaching himself to the first eight-day courtesan he can pick up, and then making out of this ephemeral connection a romantic episode in his life, what is this but an utter perversion and profanation of sentiment, no matter how the coarse points may be glossed over, and the story made amusing? Very true in the realist sense, no doubt, but a hideous falsification of all ideal and principle. Nevertheless, we cannot pass altogether by this portion of the work; it is too characteristic. We will say a word or two of it, and our word or two may perhaps be not altogether without a moral. The latter half of the Scènes de la Bohême, is, as we have hinted, chiefly devoted to Mesdemoiselles Phemy, Musette, and Minie, the respective favorites of Messrs. Schaunard, Marcel, and Rodolphe. Phemy, as the coarsest of the three, is naturally associated with the 'rough-and-ready' musician. She is the farcical character of the book, a woman who is confounded by the usages of decent society when she happens upon people who eat and dress in a civilized way. Schaunard thrashes her habitually, and when they finally part company, gives her, as a farewell present, the pieces of the cane he has broken upon her. In America, thank GOD! such a story would be unnatural. In England, one hears of such things being done by the drunken ruffians who figure in police-reports. But Schaunard is an artist, and is left on the high road to distinction. Nor, by the way, is this the only case in the book where similar proofs of affection are hinted at. This, again, may be very true in a certain a legitimate expression of the realist school, but none the less sense revolting. Musette is a grade higher, the perfect type of the Parisian grisette, pretty and pleasing, elegant and amiable, withal passing from hand to hand nearly as often as a piece of money, certainly much oftener than a respectable horse. Marcel's first acquaintance with her is made when she is giving a party in the court-yard of the house where she lodges, her furniture having been seized for rent and taken down stairs by the sheriff's officers, who are to remove it next morning. After she has quitted the painter, solely on account of his poverty, he, finding himself one day unexpectedly in funds, invites her to come and participate in the revel consequent on his good fortune. She leaves her aristocratic entertainer, (telling him quietly that he loves her as he would a fine horse in his stables, and she him because she loves noise, glitter, and luxury,) and runs off to her sentiment. On the way, a snow-storm drives her to take refuge with the actress Sidonia, who is engaged in the third day of a game of lansquenet. From this party, she goes off with a young man whom she had never seen before, and five days after recollects Marcel, who, of course, by this time, has eaten, drunk, and smoked up all his temporary wealth. Nevertheless, she stays a day with him, and then goes back again to her protector. Ultimately she marries — not Marcel, you may be sure. This again is real enough, but what a disgusting waste of talent to beautify and render interesting such a creature! Lucile alias Minnie, is the heroine of the party, as Rodolpheap32 VOL. XLIII. parently by an after-thought of the author's-is the hero. She is described in the most enchanting colors: a delicate, aristocratic-looking beauty, with exquisite hands. This ethereal creature, after various infidelities, settles definitely under the protection of the young Viscount Paul. But the sight of a copy of verses addressed to her (in the columns of a magazine) by Rodolphe, brings back her thoughts to the poet. The Viscount refusing to buy the magazine for her, she leaves him and earns the money requisite, herself, as a model; in doing which, she becomes consumptive, and goes back to Rodolphe to die-in a hospital. It must be owned that the last scenes of her life are depicted with much true pathos. An ordinary misconception of the French - perhaps we might say of the French man - is here strikingly displayed. A sinful woman makes sacrifices out of vanity, or pique, or revenge, such as a virtuous woman might make to preserve her virtue: the suffering being similar, the merit is therefore assumed to be equal. romancer The book has had a great success, not unattended by practical consequences, something like those of Jack Shepherd. It is said that many young men were seduced by it into leaving respectable positions and turning into vagabond artists or writers, not for true love of literature or art, but for love of this hap-hazard life in which every meal is more or less of an adventure. Yet the author himself allows that the euthanasia of the Bohemian is to become a man with a position and a fixed income. Here is the last glimpse we have of the four friends. A year after Minnie's death, Rodolphe and Marcel, who had kept together, were celebrating their entrance into the official world. Marcel having found his way into the exhibition at last, had sold one of his pictures to a rich Englishman, an old friend of Musette's. With the proceeds of this sale, and of an order from government, he had liquidated a portion of his debts, and furnished a comfortable lodging. Schaunard and Rodolphe had got before the paying and reputation-giving public; the former, with an album of melodies which were sung at all the concerts; the latter, with a book which kept the critics busy for a month. As to Barbemuche, he had given up Gypsy-dom long ago. Colline had inherited some property and made a good match; he gave parties with music and cakes! One afternoon, Rodolphe, seated in his own arm-chair, with his feet on his own carpet, proposed to Marcel, who had come to talk over old times with him, that they should dine that day for twelve sous at their old eating-house, 'where we were always so hungry when we had done dining.' 'No indeed!' replied Marcel. 'I like to regard the past, but it is across a bottle of good wine, and seated in a good arm-chair. I am spoiled, I confess it. I only like what is good.' The conclusion sounds like a satire on, and condemnation of, all that preceded it. The Bohemian ends, like the German student, in *THIS is more conspicuous in the dramatized version where RODOLPHE is represented as a young man of good family and prospects, with a wealthy uncle, (very different from the stove-maker, MONETTI,) all which he gives up to join the gypsy-club. becoming something very like the Philistine he despised. The landlord who asks for his own, was represented as a brute and a butt; the artist who squandered in a drunken orgie the money that might have discharged his rent, was a hero; yet the artist is last seen paying his way 'Como qualquier buen Christiano,' perchance even marrying. Would that we could hope as much of all anti-renters and repudiators! CARL BENSON. SILENT WORSHIP. FIRST BOOK OF KINGS: CHAPTER NINETEENTH VERSES ELEVENTII, TWELFTH, AND THIRTEENTII, When, by easy transition, THOUGHT wandered up-stream, Ah! well I remember those silver-rimmed specs, Well skilled in the art our wild natures to school, Know her promptness to punish, her proneness to praise. But the Spoiler o'ertook her at length in the race, Ah! well: she has gone where her troubles are o'er; And are they together, my young love and old? Ye stars-homes of all that we mourn here as lost |