ed as he was, Schaunard seated himself at his piano. After
having waked the sleeping instrument by a terrific hurly-burly of notes,
he began, talking to himself all the while, to hunt over the keys for
the tune he had long been seeking.

"Do, sol, mi, do la, si, do re. Bah! it's as false as Judas, that re!"
and he struck violently on the doubtful note. "We must represent
adroitly the grief of a young person picking to pieces a white daisy
over a blue lake. There's an idea that's not in its infancy! However,
since it is fashion, and you couldn't find a music publisher who would
dare to publish a ballad without a blue lake in it, we must go with the
fashion. Do, sol, mi, do, la, si, do, re! That's not so bad; it gives a
fair idea of a daisy, especially to people well up in botany. La, si,
do, re. Confound that re! Now to make the blue lake intelligible. We
should have something moist, azure, moonlight--for the moon comes in too;
here it is; don't let's forget the swan. Fa, mi, la, sol," continued
Schaunard, rattling over the keys. "Lastly, an adieu of the young girl,
who determines to throw herself into the blue lake, to rejoin her
beloved who is buried under the snow. The catastrophe is not very
perspicuous, but decidedly interesting. We must have something tender,
melancholy. It's coming, it's coming! Here are a dozen bars crying like
Magdalens, enough to split one's heart--Brr, brr!" and Schaunard shivered
in his spangled petticoat, "if it could only split one's wood! There's a
beam in my alcove which bothers me a good deal when I have company at
dinner. I should like to make a fire with it--la, la, re, mi--for I feel
my inspiration coming to me through the medium of a cold in the head. So
much the worse, but it can't be helped. Let us continue to drown our
young girl;" and while his fingers assailed the trembling keys,
Schaunard, with sparkling eyes and straining ears, gave chase to the
melody which, like an impalpable sylph, hovered amid the sonorous mist
which the vibrations of the instrument seemed to let loose in the room.

"Now let us see," he continued, "how my music will fit into my poet's
words;" and he hummed, in voice the reverse of agreeable, this fragment
of verse of the patent comic-opera sort:

"The fair and youthful maiden,
As she flung her mantle by,
Threw a glance with sorrow laden
Up to the starry sky
And in the azure waters
Of the silver-waved lake."

"How is that?