Bohemian Paris of To-day: Second EditionMorrow, W. C.
History
Bohemian Paris of To-day: Second Edition
Morrow, W. C.
Bohemianism; Paris (France) -- Social life and customs
That was a hard winter. A few weeks after the wedding the Hungarian's
visits to the Maison Dar-blay suddenly ceased. The haunted look had been
deepening in his eyes, his gaunt cheeks had grown thinner, and he looked
like a hunted man. After his disappearance the gendarmes came to the
restaurant to make inquiries about him. Bishop and I were present. They
wanted to know if the young man had any friends there. We told them that
we would be his friends.
"Then you will take charge of his body?" they asked.
We followed them to the Rue Perceval, where they turned us over to the
concierge of an old building. She was very glad we had come, as the lad
seemed not to have had a friend in the world. She led us up to the sixth
floor, and then pointed to a ladder leading up to the roof. We ascended
it, and found a box built on the roof. It gave a splendid view of Paris.
The door of the box was closed. We opened it, and the young artist lay
before us dead. There were two articles of furniture in the room. One
was the bare mattress on the floor, upon which he lay, and the other was
an old dresser, from which some of the drawers were missing. The young
man lay drawn up, fully dressed, his coat-collar turned up about his
ears. Thus he had fallen asleep, and thus hunger and cold had slain
him as he slept. There was one thing else in the room, all besides,
including the stove and the bed-covering, having gone for the purchase
of painting material. It was an unfinished oil-painting of the
Crucifixion. Had he lived to finish it, I am sure it would have made him
famous, if for nothing else than the wonderful expression of agony in
the Saviour's face, an agony infinitely worse than the physical pain of
the crucifixion could have produced.
There was still one thing more,--a white rat that was, hunting
industriously for food, nibbling desiccated cheese-rinds that it found
on the shelves against the wall. It had been the artist's one friend and
companion in life.
And all that, too, is a part of life in Bohemian Paris.
On the Rue Marie, not far from the Gare Montparnasse, is the "Club," a
small and artistically dirty wine-shop and restaurant, patronized by
a select crowd of musketeers of the brush. The warm, dark tones of the
anciently papered walls are hidden beneath a cloud of oil sketches,
charcoal drawings, and caricatures of everything and everybody that the
fancies of the Bohemians could devise. Madame Annaie is mistress of the
establishment, and her cook, M. Annaie, wears his cap rakishly on one
side, and attends to his business; and he makes very good potages and
rôtis, considering the small prices that are charged. Yet even the
prices, though the main attraction, are paid with difficulty by a
majority of the habitués, who sometimes fall months in arrears. Madame
Annaie keeps a big book of accounts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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