t a fortnight before he had gone into the shop of a music publisher
who had promised to procure him amongst his customers' pupils for
pianoforte lessons or pianofortes to tune.

"By Jove!" said the publisher, on seeing him enter the shop, "you are
just in time. A gentleman has been here who wants a pianist; he is an
Englishman, and will probably pay well. Are you really a good one?"

Schaunard reflected that a modest air might injure him in the
publisher's estimation. Indeed, a modest musician, and especially a
modest pianist, is a rare creation. Accordingly, he replied boldly:

"I am a first rate one; if I only had a lung gone, long hair and a black
coat, I should be famous as the sun in the heavens; and instead of
asking me eight hundred francs to engrave my composition 'The Death of
the Damsel,' you would come on your knees to offer me three thousand for
it on a silver plate."

The person whose address Schaunard took was an Englishman, named Birne.
The musician was first received by a servant in blue, who handed him
over to a servant in green, who passed him on to a servant in black, who
introduced him into a drawing room, where he found himself face to face
with a Briton coiled up in an attitude which made him resemble Hamlet
mediating on human nothingness. Schaunard was about to explain the
reason of his presence, when a sudden volley of shrill cries cut short
his speech. These horrid and ear piercing sounds proceeded from a parrot
hung out on the balcony of the story below.

"Oh! That beast, that beast!" exclaimed the Englishman, with a bound on
his arm chair, "it will kill me."

Thereupon the bird began to repeat its vocabulary, much more extensive
than that of ordinary Pollies; and Schaunard stood stupefied when he
heard the animal, prompted by a female voice, reciting the speech of
Theramenes with all the professional intonations.

This parrot was the favorite of an actress who was then a great favorite
herself, and very much the rage--in her own boudoir. She was one of
those women who, no one knows why, was quoted at fancy prices on the
'Change of dissipation, and whose names are inscribed on the bills of
fare of young noblemen's suppers, where they form the living dessert. It
gives a Christian standing now-a-days to be seen with one of these
Pagans, who often have nothing of antiquity about them except their
age. When they are handsome, there is no such great harm after all; the
worst one risks is to s