Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/388

“This comes in handy,” murmured the painter. “This trumpery will help us to rekindle the fire which is going out.”

“Indeed,” said Rodolphe, “it is cold enough here to hatch Polar bears.”

“Come,” said Marcel, “let us burn in a duet. There goes Musette’s prose; it blazes like punch. She was very fond of punch. Come, Rodolphe, attention!”

And for some minutes they alternately emptied into the fire, which blazed clear and noisily, the reliquaries of their past love.

“Poor Musette!” murmured Marcel to himself, looking at the last object remaining in his hands.

It was a little faded bouquet of wild-flowers.

“Poor Musette!” she was very pretty though, and she loved me dearly, is it not so, little bouquet? her heart told you so the day she wore you at her waist. Poor little bouquet, you seem to be pleading for mercy; well, yes; but on one condition; it is that you will never speak to me of her any more, never! never!”

And profiting by a moment when he thought himself unnoticed by Rodolphe, he slipped the bouquet into his breast pocket.

“So much the worse, it is stronger than I am. I am cheating,” thought the painter.

And as he cast a furtive glance towards Rodolphe, he saw the poet, who had come to the end of his auto-da-fé, putting quietly into his own pocket, after having tenderly kissed it, a little night-cap that had belonged to Mimi.

“Come,” muttered Marcel, “he is as great a coward as I am.”

At the very moment that Rodolphe was about to return to his room to go to bed, there were two little taps at Marcel’s door.