Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/87

“Good heavens!” cried the stranger, “what do I see? Another head? It is a bicephalous rabbit!”

“Buy what?” said Schaunard.

“Cephalous—comes from the Greek. In fact, Buffon (who used to wear ruffles) cites some cases of this monstrosity. On the whole, I am not sorry to have eaten a phenomenon.”

Thanks to this incident, the conversation was definitely established. Schaunard, not willing to be behindhand in courtesy, called for an extra quart of wine. The hero of the books called for a third. Schaunard treated to salad; the other to dessert. At eight o’clock there were six empty bottles on the table. As they talked, their natural frankness, assisted by their libations, had urged them to interchange biographies, and they knew each other as well as if they had always lived together. He of the books, after hearing the confidential disclosures of Schaunard, had informed him that his name was Gustave Colline; he was a philosopher by profession, and got his living by giving lessons in rhetoric, mathematics and several other ics.

What little money he picked up by this profession was spent in buying books. His hazel-colored coat was known to all the stall-keepers on the quay from the Pont de la Concorde to the Pont Saint Michel. What he did with these books, so numerous that no man’s lifetime would have been long enough to read them, nobody knew; least of all, himself. But this hobby of his amounted to a monomania: when he came home at night without bringing a musty quarto with him, he would repeat the saying of Titus, “I have lost a day.” His enticing manners, his language, which was a mosaic of every possible style, and the fearful puns which embellished his conversations, completely won Schaunard, who demanded on the spot permission of Col-