_rapins_--we have no word for the embryo painter--my companions in
Janot's _atelier_. Of the rest I only remember one--poor Cazalet. He
wore a self-tailored grotesque attire, a brown stuff tunic girt at the
waist by a leathern belt, shapeless trousers of the same material, and
sandals. He had long yellow hair and untrimmed chicken fluff grew
casually about his face. A sombre genius, he used to paint dark writhing
horrors of souls in pain, and in his hours of relaxation to drink litres
of anisette. At first he disliked and scoffed at me because I was an
Englishman, which grieved me sorely, for I regarded him as the greatest
genius, save Paragot, of my acquaintance. I found him ten years
afterwards a _sous-chef de gare_ on the Belgian frontier.

It was about half past eleven. Our table gleamed a motley wilderness of
glasses and saucers. Only two other tables were occupied: at the one two
men and a woman played _manille_, on the other a pair of players rattled
dominoes, Madame Boin, sunk into her rolls of fat, drowsed on her throne
behind the counter. Hercule stood by, his dirty napkin tucked under his
arm, listening to Paragot's discourse. Through the glass side of the
cafe one could see the moving, flaring lights of the Boulevard
Saint-Michel. Paragot sipped absinthe and smoked his eternal pipe with
the porcelain bowl, and talked.

"The _Quartier Latin_! Do you call this bourgeois-stricken aceldama the
_Quartier Latin_? Do you miserable little white mice in clean shirts
call this the _Vie de Boheme_? Is there a devil of a fellow among you,
save Cazalet whose chilblains make him indecent, who doesn't wear socks?
Haven't you all dress suits? Aren't you all suffocating with virtue?
Would any Marcel of you lie naked in bed for two days so that Rodolfe
could pawn your clothes for the wherewithal to nurse Mimi in sickness?
Is there a Mimi in the whole etiolated _Quartier_?"

"But yes, _mon vieux_," said my friend Bringard who prided himself on
his intimacy with life. "There are even a great many."

Paragot swept his skinny fingers in a circular gesture.

"Where are they? Here? You see not. It is a stunted generation, my
gentle little lambs. Why _sacre nom de Saint-Antoine_!" he cried, with
one of his apposite oaths, "the very pigs in the good days could teach
you lessons in the romantic. Vices you have--but the noble passions? No!
Did you ever hear of the Cafe du Cochon Fidele? Of course not. What do
you know? It was situa