French Men of Letters

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HENRI MURQER. Bohemia is the stage of art life; the anteroom to the Academy or to the Morgue. Every man who enters the realm of art, with no means of existence other than art itself, will be forced to tread the paths of Bohemia. Every way is practicable for Bohemians. They always know how to avail...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HENRI MURQER. Bohemia is the stage of art life; the anteroom to the Academy or to the Morgue. Every man who enters the realm of art, with no means of existence other than art itself, will be forced to tread the paths of Bohemia. Every way is practicable for Bohemians. They always know how to avail themselves of the accidents of the road; neither rain nor dust, neither sunshine nor shadows?nothing arrests these bold adventurers whose every vice is double-lined with a virtue. Their existence is in itself a work of genius, a daily problem which they solve by the aid of the most audacious mathematics. They could borrow money from Harpagon, and dig truffles out of the head of Medusa. When compelled to do so, they know how to practice abstinence with all the virtue of an anchorite; Should fortune, however, smile never so faintly upon them, they at once mount the most ruinous fancies, and can not find windows enough out of which to throw away their money. The last franc being gone, they begin again to dine at the table tfhdte of chance. From' morning to night they are compelled to chase that wary animal called the five-franc piece. The associations of the Bohemian depend almost entirely upon the condition of his wardrobe and the state of his finances. You meet them oneday leaning against the mantelpiece of a fashionable salon, and on the morrow sitting around the tables of the lowest cafe-concerts. They can not walk a dozen steps on the Boulevard without meeting an acquaintance, and not thirty steps anywhere without meeting a creditor. Theirs is a life of watching and waiting in which struggling is of no avail without a breastplate of indifference which is proof against the blows of envy and malice; a life which has its charms and its terrors, which reckons its victors and its mar...