Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/273

nankeen jacket and a hunting horn, that have for a long time caught my eye. I shall certainly present myself with them.”

“But,” added Marcel and Rodolphe together, “where do you hope to draw this amount of capital from?”

“Hearken, gentlemen,” said Schaunard, putting on a serious air, and sitting down between his two friends, “we must not hide from one another that before becoming members of the Institute and ratepayers, we have still a great deal of rye-bread to eat, and that daily bread is hard to get. On the other hand, we are not alone; as heaven has created us sensitive to love, each of us has chosen another to share his lot.”

“Which is little,” interrupted Marcel.

“But,” continued Schaunard, “whilst living with the strictest economy, it is difficult when one has nothing to put anything on one side, above all if one’s appetite is always larger than one’s plate.”

“What are you driving at?” asked Rodolphe.

“This,” resumed Schaunard, “that in our present situation we should all be wrong to play the haughty when a chance offers itself, even outside our art, of putting a figure in front of the cipher that constitutes our capital.”

“Well!” said Marcel, “which of us can you reproach with playing the haughty. Great painter as I shall be some day, have I not consented to devote my brush to the pictorial reproduction of French soldiers, who pay me out of their scanty pocket-money? It seems to me that I am not afraid to descend the ladder of my future greatness.”

“And I,” said Rodolphe, “do not you know that for the past fortnight I have been writing a medico-chirurgical epic for a celebrated dentist, who has hired my inspiration at fifteen sous the dozen lines, about half the price of oysters? However, I do not blush; rather than let my