hich belong to a class badly judged till now, whose greatest crime is
lack of order, and who can even plead in excuse that this very lack of
order is a necessity of the life they lead.

CHAPTER II

A GOOD ANGEL

Schaunard and Marcel, who had been grinding away valiantly a whole
morning, suddenly struck work.

"Thunder and lightning! I'm hungry!" cried Schaunard. And he added
carelessly, "Do we breakfast today?"

Marcel appeared much astonished at this very inopportune question.

"How long has it been the fashion to breakfast two days running?" he
asked. "And yesterday was Thursday." He finished his reply by tracing
with his mahl-stick the ecclesiastic ordinance:

"On Friday eat no meat,
Nor aught resembling it."

Schaunard, finding no answer, returned to his picture, which represented
a plain inhabited by a red tree and a blue tree shaking branches; an
evident allusion to the sweets of friendship, which had a very
philosophical effect.

At this moment the porter knocked; he had brought a letter for Marcel.

"Three sous," said he.

"You are sure?" replied the artist. "Very well, you can owe it to us."

He shut the door in the man's face, and opened the letter. At the first
line, he began to vault around the room like a rope-dancer and thundered
out, at the top of his voice, this romantic ditty, which indicated with
him the highest pitch of ecstasy:

"There were four juveniles in our street;
They fell so sick they could not eat;
They carried them to the hospital!--
Tal! Tal! Tal! Tal!"

"Oh yes!" said Schaunard, taking him up:

"They put all four into one big bed,
Two at the feet and two at the head."

"Think I don't know it?" Marcel continued:

"There came a sister of Charity--
Ty! Ty! tee! tee!"

"If you don't stop," said Schaunard, who suspected signs of mental
alienation, "I'll play the allegro of my symphony on 'The Influence of
Blue in the Arts.'" So saying, he approached the piano.

This menace had the effect of a drop of cold water in a boiling fluid.
Marcel grew calm as if by magic. "Look there!" said he, passing the
letter to his friend. It was an invitation to dine with a deputy, an
enlightened patron of the arts in general and Marcel in particular,
since the latter had taken the portrait of his country-house.

"For today," sighed Schaunard. "Unluckily the ticket is not good for
two. But stay! Now I think of it, your deputy is of