Murger and his friends were the legitimate successors of _la Bohème galante_, and in view of their fictitious counterparts already introduced the main interest of this chapter lies with them. Yet before they appear there are some byways of Bohemia that call for inspection as an illustration and a contrast. Bohemia was, of course, always bordered on one side by the student life of the Quartier Latin, the freedom and licence of which were both different and older in origin, going back to the days of the schoolmen, when indigent scholars of all nations filled the great university cities of Europe, forming in each a picturesque but turbulent community. Even in most prosaic days the students of Paris have kept up the medieval tradition, but particular manifestations would naturally be influenced by the manners of the day. It is, therefore, not surprising that the student quarter was profoundly affected by the Romantic movement, and reflected its battles and its extravagances with a hilarious distortion. The motley world of the Quartier Latin and those who, though no longer students, remained attached to it had their "local colour," their Gothic enthusiasms, and their orgies. They had dining clubs with fantastic names, such as "Les 45 jolis cochons," which indulged in something very like bump-suppers, with loud singing in the streets, window-breaking, and practical joking to follow. The campaign of "Hernani" was imitated in the Salle Chanteraine--a theatre for amateurs--where there was nightly a _fracas_ with fisticuffs between the various factions. Elaborate farces were organized to mystify the good people of Paris, of which Maxime du Camp gives a good example in his "Souvenirs Littéraires." It was called "La grande chevauchée de la côtelette aux cornichons." Thirty young men, dressed in velvet waistcoats and nankeen jackets, with long hair and beards, headed by a certain young teacher of history waving a stick, marched solemnly in serried single file with a halting step, dangling their arms at the same time, from the Place Pigalle over the Pont Royal, crying in unison, "Une deux, une deux, le choléra, le choléra!" At the end of the Pont Royal they turned round in a body and shouted, "Connaissez-vous le thermomètre de l'ingénieur Chevalier?" Solemnly facing about again, they proceeded as before to Sainte-Mandé, where they lunched off pork cutlets.