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“Je ne vous dérange pas, Madame?”

“Faîtes donc, faîtes donc,” replies the deep, sepulchral voice of Veuve Mollard.

A cracked water-colour landscape signed, ever so faintly, “R. E. F.” Disposed of, perhaps, for a five-franc piece; and to-day the painter either dead, or a shabby, lonely, struggling old fellow? or a rich and distinguished “master”? A sword—used in a duel? A small silver mug—from a god-father? Pink, white and black dominoes: they should have been placed amongst the courtesan’s finery. The bâton of a chef d’orchestre, silver-mounted, of ebony. A bunch of tarnished seals; chipped vases and liqueur glasses; a cracked, frameless mirror; a collection of old legal and medical books; a heap of dusty, fantastic draperies of the kind used extensively by the students of the Latin Quarter. Deceptive draperies that once turned a bed into a divan, discreet draperies that hid the scars on the walls—the draperies of Paul and Pierre, of Gaston and René, sons of Henri Mürger, genuine, veritable Bohemians, who, if they lived recklessly and irresponsibly, were nevertheless full of generous impulses, imagination, ideals, but who to-day are become stout, bourgeois, double-chinned inhabitants of such dreary provincial towns as Abbeville and Arras.