It is melancholy to go back to a deserted ballroom, and we may spare ourselves the pain. That joyous evening, little as it may have seemed to do so, marked the passing of the golden age. Bohemia's sun henceforth descended the skies. The next year saw marked changes. The landlord of the old house in the Impasse du Doyenné saw with relief--Gérard says he gave them notice to quit--the departure of his turbulent tenants. If Rogier had not gone to Constantinople it is possible that, even if the band had been compelled to change its quarters, some reconstruction of _la Bohème galante_ might have been possible. With him, the stable, the earner of money, absent, there was no hope. The heroes of Bohemia had to leave their enchanted garden for the ordinarily circumscribed dwelling of impecunious mortals, and, like the heroes of Valhalla when Freia is snatched from them, a certain wanness came over the complexion of their lives. Joy and beauty and work and love were left, but the magic bloom had just faded. With smaller resources and in a colder light the resettlement of Bohemia was a work of compromise, not spontaneous achievement. Rogier was gone; Ourliac, who produced "Suzanne" with success, married before long, grew serious, and ended his days in the fullest odour of piety; Roger de Beauvoir found the boulevard more to his taste than any less brilliant Bohemia. Gautier, Gérard, and Houssaye were left, a trio of markedly divergent tastes. They made one attempt at a common life in the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which seems to have lasted a year or two. The details of it given by Gautier[26] and Houssaye[27] differ considerably. According to Gautier they did their own cooking: Arsène Houssaye was perfect in the _panade_, Gautier prepared the macaroni, no doubt remembering Graziano, while Gérard "went, with perfect self-possession, to buy galantines, sausages, or fresh pork cutlets with gherkins at the neighbouring cook-shop." Houssaye, on the other hand, says that they had a rascally valet and a cook called Margot, and that they broke up because they were at variance on the degree of luxury to be maintained, Gérard, whom anything satisfied, departing to a bare _hôtel garni_, Gautier to a sumptuous apartment in the Rue de Navarin, and Houssaye sharing rooms in the Rue du Bac, on the left bank, with Jules Sandeau. I do not trouble to reconcile these two accounts, for the memories of Bohemia are invariably picturesque. The fact remains that the old days could not come back. The first Bohemians were growing older, and the world was beginning to claim its once youthful defiers as servitors. Though Gérard's bed remained with Gautier as a memory of freer days, he knew too well that the gates of the prison were closing upon him. For a year or so he might pretend to mock destiny by producing another book of verses and a novel, or by making a voyage in Belgium accompanied by Gérard: but he was a doomed man.