E-text prepared by Chuck Greif from digital text provided by the Worchel Institute for the Study of Beat and Bohemian Literature (http://home.swbell.net/worchel/index.html) Note: This book by Henry Murger, originally published in 1851, was the source of two operas titled "La Bohème"--one by Giacomo Puccini (1896) and the other by Ruggero Leoncavallo (1897). Project Gutenberg also has the original French version of the book (Scènes de la vie de bohème); see https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/18446. BOHEMIANS OF THE LATIN QUARTER by HENRY MURGER 1888 Vizetelly & Co. London TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Chapter I, How The Bohemian Club Was Formed Chapter II, A Good Angel Chapter III, Lenten Loves Chapter IV, Ali Rodolphe; Or, The Turk Perforce Chapter V, The Carlovingian Coin Chapter VI, Mademoiselle Musette Chapter VII, The Billows of Pactolus Chapter VIII, The Cost Of a Five Franc Piece Chapter IX, The White Violets Chapter X, The Cape of Storms Chapter XI, A Bohemian Cafe Chapter XII, A Bohemian "At Home" Chapter XIII, The House Warming Chapter XIV, Mademoiselle Mimi Chapter XV, Donec Gratus Chapter XVI, The Passage of the Red Sea Chapter XVII, The Toilette of the Graces Chapter XVIII, Francine's Muff Chapter XIX, Musette's Fancies Chapter XX, Mimi in Fine Feather Chapter XXI, Romeo and Juliet Chapter XXII, Epilogue To The Loves Of Rodolphe And Mademoiselle Mimi Chapter XXIII, Youth Is Fleeting PREFACE The Bohemians of whom it is a question in this book have no connection with the Bohemians whom melodramatists have rendered synonymous with robbers and assassins. Neither are they recruited from among the dancing-bear leaders, sword swallowers, gilt watch-guard vendors, street lottery keepers and a thousand other vague and mysterious professionals whose main business is to have no business at all, and who are always ready to turn their hands to anything except good. The class of Bohemians referred to in this book are not a race of today, they have existed in all climes and ages, and can claim an illustrious descent. In ancient Greece, to go no farther back in this genealogy, there existed a celebrated Bohemian, who lived from hand to mouth round the fertile country of Ionia, eating the bread of charity, and halting in the evening to tune beside some hospitable hearth the harmonious lyre that had sung the loves of Helen and the fall of Troy. Descending the steps of time modern Bohemia finds ancestors at every artistic and literary epoch. In the Middle Ages it perpetuates the Homeric tradition with its minstrels and ballad makers, the children of the gay science, all the melodious vagabonds of Touraine, all the errant songsters who, with the beggar's wallet and the trouvere's harp slung at their backs, traversed, singing as they went, the plains of the beautiful land where the eglantine of Clemence Isaure flourished.