Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/23

Barbemuche was a fancy sketch of Charles Barbara, who was by no means flattered by it, and who to some extent revenged himself on Murger in the Assassinat du Pont Rouge. He was the son of a musical instrument maker at Orleans, and though a good fellow at the bottom, was not very taking at the outset. His dress and manner smacked of a situation he had held as master at the college of Nates. He willingly eveloped himself in mystery, and the group to which Murger introduced him when tutor in the family of Drouin de Lhuys never visited his residence. After a fairly successful literary career, he suddenly lost his wife and child during the cholera of 1865. Taken ill himself and removed to a hospital, he committed suicide by throwing himself out of a window.

Many of the minor characters too are traceable. The Jew Medicis, alias Salomon, really kept a shop in the Rue du Musée, one of the little streets formerly encumbering the Place du Carrousel. M. Benoit was the well-known landlord of the Hotel Merciol in the Rue des Canettes. Even Baptiste had his prototype.

“Mimi” was for Murger, a kind of generic appellation. His first love was undoubtedly one of his cousins, named Angèle, the daughter of a stove maker, more or less Piedmontese. But this love was more than plantonic, it was ethereal, for his young relative was never touched by it, neither bouquets nor madrigals in prose and verse could move her. She married, and he, full of her remembrance, paints her under the name of Hélène in the Buveurs d’eau. She had, however, a friend named Marie, who became Madame Duchampy in the Scènes de la vie de Jeunesse, and partly lends her features to the Mimi of the present volume. She was more compassionate towards the poet, and her very effective compassion lasted a considerable time, although she was married. Schanne mentions meeting them to-