He shut the door in the man's face, and opened the letter. At the first line, he began to vault around the room like a rope-dancer and thundered out, at the top of his voice, this romantic ditty, which indicated with him the highest pitch of ecstasy: "There were four juveniles in our street; They fell so sick they could not eat; They carried them to the hospital!-- Tal! Tal! Tal! Tal!" "Oh yes!" said Schaunard, taking him up: "They put all four into one big bed, Two at the feet and two at the head." "Think I don't know it?" Marcel continued: "There came a sister of Charity-- Ty! Ty! tee! tee!" "If you don't stop," said Schaunard, who suspected signs of mental alienation, "I'll play the allegro of my symphony on 'The Influence of Blue in the Arts.'" So saying, he approached the piano. This menace had the effect of a drop of cold water in a boiling fluid. Marcel grew calm as if by magic. "Look there!" said he, passing the letter to his friend. It was an invitation to dine with a deputy, an enlightened patron of the arts in general and Marcel in particular, since the latter had taken the portrait of his country-house. "For today," sighed Schaunard. "Unluckily the ticket is not good for two. But stay! Now I think of it, your deputy is of the government party; you cannot, you must not accept. Your principles will not permit you to partake of the bread which has been watered by the tears of the people." "Bah!" replied Marcel, "my deputy is a moderate radical; he voted against the government the other day. Besides, he is going to get me an order, and he has promised to introduce me in society. Moreover, this may be Friday as much as it likes; I am famished as Ugolino, and I mean to dine today. There now!" "There are other difficulties," continued Schaunard, who could not help being a little jealous of the good fortune that had fallen to his friend's lot. "You can't dine out in a red flannel shirt and slippers." "I shall borrow clothes of Rodolphe or Colline." "Infatuated youth! Do you forget that this is the twentieth, and at this time of the month their wardrobe is up to the very top of the spout?" "Between now and five o'clock this evening I shall find a dress-coat." "I took three weeks to get one when I went to my cousin's wedding and that was in January." "Well, then, I shall go as I am," said Marcel, with a theatrical stride. "It shall certainly never be said that a miserable question of etiquette hindered me from making my first step in society." "Without boots," suggested his friend. Marcel rushed out in a state of agitation impossible to describe. At the end of two hours he returned, loaded with a false collar. "Hardly worth while to run so far for that," said Schaunard. "There was paper enough to make a dozen."