Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/20

asking himself at all hours of the day, ‘Am I painter or a musician?’” and although he once figured in the Salon and contributed illustrations to periodicals, he was more successful in his musical compositions. The celebrated symphony “On the Influence of Blue in Art” was really composed and frequently executed by him, though never published. He ascribes it to his having painted a good deal on the summit of the towers of Notre Dame, a consequence of sky-gazing at that height being that he began to see blue and to paint blue. He became acquainted with Murger in 1841, and for some time they lived together in the Rue de la Harpe, their friendship continuing to the close of the author’s life. Schanne had amongst other nicknames that of Schannard-sauvage, and in the opening chapter of The Bohemians as originally published in the Corsaire Murger wrote of him as Schannard, which by a printer’s error left uncorrected became Schaunard. On his father’s death Schanne abandoned his artistic career and took charge of the toy-making business, which he carried on to the last.

Marcel is composed of two artists who ended very differently, Lazare and Tabar. lLazare was a tall, powerful, fair-haired, and rather red-faced young fellow. The best off of all the set, he lived with his brother in the Rue d’Enfer, in a house inherited from their father. There was no other Bohemian so well to do, and perhaps it was sheer love of contrast that led him to take such interest in the seamy side of Parisian life, to hunt out odd industries like Champfleury, and haunt strange dens like Privat d’Anglemont. Tabar was a young painter of some talent and extraordinary strength. “One evening,” says Schanne, “when seven or eight of us had started on an excursion into the country, he thrashed and routed a gang of roughs who attacked us near the Barrière du Maine. This Hercules of a painter