his delightful inspiration of receiving a pressing creditor, a furniture dealer, with the recitation of a touching poem, "Meublez-vous les uns les autres," which affected the dun to tears. "We had no money, but we lived _en grands seigneurs_," wrote Arsène Houssaye, looking back. Indeed they did, if it be princely to have pretty actresses to perform impromptu comedies and dancers of the Opéra for one's partners in a quadrille. I suspect that these occasions were not so frequent as the exuberant narrator would have us suppose. Gérard more frankly says they spent much valuable time making eyes at the landlord's wife, who lived on the ground floor, which argues an occasional dearth of desirable objects for idle glances. Nevertheless, dances and comedies they did have, and towards the end of its epoch _la Bohème galante_ had one supreme festival. It was a combined dramatic entertainment and fancy-dress ball, which took place in November 1835. The idea, says Gautier, was Gérard's own, who thus made amends for his frequent absences by being responsible for the crowning glory of the first Bohemia. His suggestion rested on the artistic ground that it was a pity to inhabit a room and never to receive there a company worthy of it: a _bal costumé_ alone could produce a gathering that would not clash with the decorations. That was all very well, but the general finances were in a melancholy condition, and a reception, even in Bohemia, required capital. Gérard brushed the objection lightly aside. People who are without the necessaries of life, he pointed out, must have the superfluities, or they would have nothing at all, which would be too little, even for poets. As for refreshments, they would do better than give their guests cups of weak tea or rum punch; they would feast the eye instead by having the room specially decorated with mural paintings by their friends, the artists. Only princes and farmers-general could indulge in such magnificence, and the fame of the Impasse would be undying.