The moral of Lucien de Rubempré, so far as we are immediately concerned, is not ethical, but resolves itself into the truth that there was an open passage between Bohemia and _le tout Paris_ which was crossed by not a few. Gautier crossed it, so did Arsène Houssaye, Ourliac, the dramatist, and several others. There were also men who seemed to spend their time between the two, like the elder Dumas, Roger de Beauvoir, and Alfred de Musset, who combined the extravagance of Bohemia with the luxury of the boulevards in different proportions, without ever being entire Bohemians or complete _viveurs_, and who maintained such a continuous communication between the more literary sections of _le tout Paris_ and the finer talents of Bohemia that it would be in some cases difficult to say where one left off and the other began. It is therefore impossible to write of the _vie de Bohème_ without entering into this larger and more conspicuous life of what may be called _la haute Bohème_. Not only was it the sound-board from which in a lucky moment the struggling whisperer on the left bank might hear his utterances booming forth to a multitude eager for novelty, not only was it an unofficial academy to which every Bohemian might aspire to belong as soon as he had made his mark, but it was also, during the years following 1830, animated by such a spirit of revelry and reckless amusement that the riots of true Bohemia were as pale ghosts before its more notable orgies. There were strong reasons for the merging of the two Bohemias, and the only precise distinction was the possession or want of money. Bohemia proper has no money except what it can make by its art, and as its inhabitants are young that is little enough. _La haute Bohème_, with a less strict limitation of years, makes money and spends it recklessly. Instead of pleading youth as the excuse of its folly, it claims the indulgence due to artistic achievement. However, so far as the generation of 1830 were concerned, this distinction was not absolute, for the Bohemians of 1830 were not invariably so destitute as their successors, so that they were enabled to mix to some extent in the gayer life of the artistic _boulevardiers_. The most universal word--which I shall adopt--applicable to this _haute Bohème_ is the contemporary name for them, _les viveurs_. They were a particular product of the time, and no words of mine can describe them better than a passage from Balzac's "Illusions Perdues." The period of the novel is some years before 1830, but this particular description is far more applicable to the years that followed the second Revolution. I quote it in French, because it is impossible to do it justice in a translation: