Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/93

the key in the door, though I took it away with me this morning. Ah! we shall just see. I put it in my pocket. Why, confound it, here it is still!” he exclaimed, displaying a key. “This is witchcraft.”

“Phantasmagoria,” said Colline.

“Fancy,” added Rodolphe.

“But,” resumed Schaunard, whose voice betrayed a commencement of alarm, “do you hear that?”

“What?”

“What?”

“My piano, which is playing of its own accord do la mi ré do, la si sol ré. Scoundrel of a ré, it is still false.”

“But it cannot be in your room,” said Rodolphe; and he added in a whisper to Colline, against whom he was leaning heavily, “he is tight.”

“So I think. In the first place, it is not a piano at all, it is a flute.”

“But you are screwed too, my dear fellow,” observed the poet to the philosopher, who had sat down on the landing, “it is a violin.”

“A vio—, pooh! I say, Schaunard,” hiccoughed Colline, pulling his friend by the legs, “here is a joke; this gentleman makes out that it is a vio—”

“Hang it all,” exclaimed Schaunard in the height of terror, “it is magic.”

“Phantasma—goria,” howled Colline, letting fall one of the bottles he held in his hand.

“Fancy,” yelled Rodolphe in turn.

In the midst of this uproar the room door suddenly opened and an individual holding a triple-branched candlestick in which pink candles were burning, appeared on the threshold.

“What do you want, gentlemen?” asked he, bowing courteously to the three friends.