your
company at dinner tomorrow evening at five o'clock sharp."

"N.B.--There will be plates."

"Gentlemen," said Marcel, when communicating the letter to his comrades,
"the news is confirmed, Rodolphe has really a mistress; further he
invites us to dinner, and the postscript promises crockery. I will not
conceal from you that this last paragraph seems to me a lyrical
exaggeration, but we shall see."

The following day at the hour named, Marcel, Gustave Colline, and
Alexander Schaunard, keen set as on the last day of Lent, went to
Rodolphe's, whom they found playing with a sandy haired cat, whilst a
young woman was laying the table.

"Gentlemen," said Rodolphe, shaking his friends' hands and indicating
the young lady, "allow me to introduce you to the mistress of the
household."

"You are the household, are you not?" said Colline, who had a mania for
this kind of joke.

"Mimi," replied Rodolphe, "I present my best friends; now go and get the
soup ready."

"Oh madame," said Alexander Schaunard, hastening towards Mimi, "you are
as fresh as a wild flower."

After having satisfied himself that there were really plates on the
table, Schaunard asked what they were going to have to eat. He even
carried his curiosity so far as to lift up the covers of the stewpans in
which the dinner was cooking. The presence of a lobster produced a
lively impression upon him.

As to Colline, he had drawn Rodolphe aside to ask about his
philosophical article.

"My dear fellow, it is at the printer's. 'The Beaver' appears next
Thursday."

We give up the task of depicting the philosopher's delight.

"Gentlemen," said Rodolphe to his friends. "I ask your pardon for
leaving you so long without any news of me, but I was spending my
honeymoon." And he narrated the story of his union with the charming
creature who had brought him as a dowry her eighteen years and a half,
two porcelain cups, and a sandy haired cat named Mimi, like herself.

"Come, gentlemen," said Rodolphe, "we are going to celebrate my house
warming. I forewarn you, though, that we are about to have merely a
family repast; truffles will be replaced by frank cordiality."

Indeed, that amiable goddess did not cease to reign amongst the guests,
who found, however, that the so-called frugal repast did not lack a
certain amplitude. Rodolphe, indeed, had spread himself out. Colline
called attention to the fact that the plates were changed, and declared
aloud that Mademo