ated drew lots as to who should cast his chair into the fire.

By one o'clock every one was standing.

Amiable gaiety did not cease to reign amongst the guests. There were no
accidents to be regretted, with the exception of a rent in the foreign
languages pocket of Colline's swallow-tail and a smack in the face given
by Schaunard to the daughter of Cromwell's Lord Chancellor.

This memorable evening was for a week the staple subject of gossip in
the district, and Phemie Teinturiere, who had been the queen of the
fete, was accustomed to remark, when talking it over with her friends,--

"It was awfully fine. There were composite candles, my dear."

CHAPTER VI

MADEMOISELLE MUSETTE

Mademoiselle Musette was a pretty girl of twenty who shortly after her
arrival in Paris had become what many pretty girls become when they
have a neat figure, plenty of coquesttishness, a dash of ambition and
hardly any education. After having for a long time shone as the star of
the supper parties of the Latin Quarter, at which she used to sing in a
voice, still very fresh if not very true, a number of country ditties,
which earned her the nickname under which she has since been
immortalized by one of our neatest rhymsters, Mademoiselle Musette
suddenly left the Rue de la Harpe to go and dwell upon the Cytherean
heights of the Breda district.

She speedily became one of the foremost of the aristocracy of pleasure
and slowly made her way towards that celebrity which consists in being
mentioned in the columns devoted to Parisian gossip, or lithographed at
the printsellers.

However Mademoiselle Musette was an exception to the women amongst whom
she lived. Of a nature instinctively elegant and poetical, like all
women who are really such, she loved luxury and the many enjoyments
which it procures; her coquetry warmly coveted all that was handsome and
distinguished; a daughter of the people, she would not have been in any
way out of her element amidst the most regal sumptuosity. But
Mademoiselle Musette, who was young and pretty, had never consented to
be the mistress of any man who was not like herself young and handsome.
She had been known bravely to refuse the magnificient offers of an old
man so rich that he was styled the Peru of the Chaussee d'Antin, and who
had offered a golden ladder to the gratification of her fancies.
Intelligent and witty, she had also a repugnance for fools and
simpletons, whatever might be their age,