When want presses them, abstemious as anchorites--but, if a little fortune falls into their hands, see them ride forth on the most ruinous fancies, loving the fairest and youngest, drinking the oldest and best wines, and not finding enough windows whence to throw their money; then--the last crown dead and buried--they begin again to dine at the table d'hôte of chance, where their cover is always laid; smugglers of all the industries which spring from art; in chase, from morning till night, of that wild animal which is called the crown. "Bohemia" has a special dialect, a distinct jargon of its own. This vocabulary is the hell of rhetoric and the paradise of neologism_. _A gay life; yet a terrible one_! (Il. MURGER, preface to "Vie de Bohème")[1] [Footnote 1: Rather than follow MURGER'S novel step by step, the authors of the present libretto, both for reasons of musical and dramatic effect, have sought to derive inspiration from the French writer's admirable preface. Although they have faithfully portrayed the characters, even displaying a certain fastidiousness as to sundry local details; albeit in the scenic development of the opera they have followed Murger's method of dividing the libretto into four separate acts, in the dramatic and comic episodes they have claimed that ample and entire freedom of action, which, rightly or wrongly, they deemed necessary to the proper scenic presentment of a novel the most free, perhaps, in modern literature. Yet, in this strange book, if the characters of each person therein stand out clear and sharply defined, we often may perceive that one and the same temperament bears different names, and that it is incarnated, so to speak, in two different persons. Who cannot detect in the delicate profile of one woman the personality both of Mimi and of Francine? Who, as he reads of Mimi's "little hands, whiter than those of the Goddess of Ease," is not reminded of Francine's little muff? The authors deem it their duty to point out this identity of character. It has seemed to them that these two mirthful, fragile, and unhappy creatures in this comedy of Bohemian life might haply figure as one person, whose name should not be Mimi, not Francine, but "the Ideal."] ACT I "...Mimi was a charming girl specially apt to appeal to Rudolph, the poet and dreamer. Aged twenty-two, she was slight and graceful. Her face reminded one of some sketch of high-born beauty; its features had marvellous refinement. "The hot, impetuous blood of youth coursed through her veins, giving a rosy hue to her clear complexion that had the white velvety bloom of the camellia. "This frail beauty allured Rudolph. But what wholly served to enchant him were Mimi's tiny hands, that, despite her household duties, she contrived to keep whiter even than the Goddess of Ease." ACT I IN THE ATTIC