As a rule, these Bohemians all sleep during the day, as that is the best way to keep warm; at night they can find warmth in the cabarets. In the afternoon they may write a few lines, which they sell in some way for a pittance, wherewithal to buy them a meal and a night's vigil in one of these resorts. This is the life of lower Bohemia plain and simple,--not the life of the students, but of the misfit geniuses who drift, who have neither place nor part in the world, who live from hand to mouth, and who shudder when the Morgue is mentioned,--and it is so near, and its lights never go out! They are merely protestants against the formalism of life, rebels against its necessities. They seek no following, they desire to exercise no influence. They lead their vacant lives without the slightest restraint, bear their poverty without a murmur, and go to their dreary end without a sigh. These are the true Bohemians of Paris. Other visitors came into the Soleil d'Or and sought seats among their friends at the tables, while others kept leaving, bound for other rendezvous, many staying just sufficiently long to hear a song or two. They were all of the same class, very negligently and poorly attired, some displaying their odd pieces of finery with an exquisite assumption of unconsciousness on its account, as though they were millionaires and cared nothing for such trivial things. And the whimsical incongruities of it! If one wore a shining tile he either had no shirt (or perhaps a very badly soiled one), or wore a frayed coat and disreputable shoes. In fact, no complete respectable dress made its appearance in the room that night, though each visitor had his distinctive specialty,--one a burnished top hat, another a gorgeous cravat, another a rich velvet jacket, and so on. But they all wore their hair as long as it would grow. That is the Bohemian mark. The little bell again rang, and the heavy director announced that "Monsieur Léon Décarmeau will sing one of his newest songs." Monsieur Léon Décarmeau was a lean, half-starved appearing man of about forty, whose eyes were sunk deep in his head, and whose sharp cheek-bones protruded prominently. On the bridge of his thin, angular nose set a pair of "pince-nez," attached by a broad black cord, which he kept fingering nervously as he sang. His song was entitled "Fleurs et Pensées," and he threw himself into it with a broad and passionate eagerness that heavily strained the barrier between melodrama and burlesque. His glance sought the ceiling in a frenzied quest of imaginary nymphs, his arms swayed as he tenderly caressed imaginary flowers of sweet love and drank in their intoxicating perfume instead of the hot, tobacco-rife smoke of the room. His voice was drawn out in tremendous sighs full of tears, and his chest heaved like a blacksmith's bellows. But when he had ceased he was most generously applauded and praised.