All were seated at little round tables, as are the habitués of the _café_s, and their attention was directed upon a slim young fellow with curling yellow hair and a faint moustache, who was singing, leaning meanwhile upon a piano that stood on a low platform in one corner of the room. Their attention was respectful, delicate, sympathetic, and, as might be supposed, brought out the best in the lad. It was evident that he had not long been a member of the sacred circle. His voice was a smooth, velvety tenor, and under proper instruction might have been useful to its possessor as a means of earning a livelihood. But it was clear that he had already fallen under the spell of the associations to which accident or his inclination had brought him; and this meant that henceforth he would live in this strange no-world of dreams, hopes, sufferings, and idleness, and that likely he would in time come to gather cigar-stumps on the sanded pavement of the Café d'Harcourt, and after that sleep with the rats under the bridges of the Seine. At this moment, however, he lived in the clouds; he breathed and glowed with the spirit of shiftless, proud, starving Bohemianism as it is lived in Paris, benignantly disdainful of the great moiling, money-grubbing world that roared around him, and perhaps already the adoration of some girl of poetic or artistic tastes and aspirations, who was serving him as only the Church gives a woman the right. There was time to look about while he was singing, though that was difficult, so strange and pathetic a picture he made. The walls of the room were dirty and bare, though relieved at rare intervals by sketches and signs. The light came from three gas-burners, and was reflected by a long mirror at one end of the room. No attention had been paid to our entrance, except by the garçon, a heavy-set, bull-necked fellow, who, with a sign, bade us make no noise. When the song had finished the audience broke into uproarious applause, shouting, "_Bravo, mon vieux!" "Bien fait, Marquis!_" and the clapping of hands and beating of glasses on the marble-topped tables and pounding of canes on the floor made a mighty din. The young singer, his cheeks glowing and his eyes blazing, modestly rolled up his music and sought his seat. We were now piloted to seats by the garçon, who, when we had settled ourselves, demanded to know what we would drink. "_Deux bocks!_" he yelled across the room. "_Deux bocks!_" came echoing back from the counter, where a fat woman presided--knitting.