ins, taken at random on the
highroads. But since you have made of the word with all the charm
attaching to it a stigma and an insult, to whom do you apply it? To
certain poor long-haired devils, in love with freedom in rags and
tatters, who starve to death on fifth floors, looking at the sky at too
close quarters, or seeking rhymes under tiles through which the rain
drips; to those idiots, fewer and fewer in number, who in their horror
of the conventional, the traditional, of the dense stupidity of life,
have taken a standing jump over the edge. But that's the way it used to
be, I tell you. That's the Bohemia of Murger, with the hospital at the
end, the terror of children, the comfort of kindred, Little Red Riding
Hood eaten by the wolf. That state of things came to an end a long
while ago. To-day you know perfectly well that artists are the most
well-behaved people on earth, that they earn money, pay their debts and
do their best to resemble the ordinary man. There is no lack of genuine
Bohemians, however; our society is made up of them, but they are found
more particularly in your circle. _Parbleu!_ they are not labelled
on the outside, and no one distrusts them; but so far as the
uncertainty of existence and lack of order are concerned, they have no
reason to envy those whom they so disdainfully call 'irregulars.' Ah!
if one knew all the baseness, all the unheard-of, monstrous experiences
that may be masked by a black coat, the most correct of your horrible
modern garments! Jenkins, at your house the other evening, I amused
myself counting all those adventurers of high--"

The little old lady, pink-cheeked and powdered, said to her softly from
her seat:

"Felicia--take care--"

But she went on without listening to her:

"Who is this Monpavon, Doctor? And Bois-l'Hery? And Mora himself?
And--"

She was on the point of saying, "And the Nabob?" but checked herself.

"And how many others! Oh! really, I advise you to speak contemptuously
of Bohemia. Why, your clientage as a fashionable physician, O sublime
Jenkins, is made up of nothing else. Bohemia of manufacturing, of
finance, of politics; fallen stars, the tainted of all castes, and the
higher you go the more of them there are, because high rank gives
impunity and wealth closes many mouths."

She spoke with great animation, harshly, her lip curling in fierce
disdain. The other laughed a false laugh and assumed an airy,
condescending tone. "Ah! madcap! madcap!"