DOI Artikel:
Harland, Henry: The bohemian girl
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0020
i6
The Bohemian Girl
person radiating health, power, contentment, and the pride of
them : he was a sight worth seeing, spirited, picturesque, pre-
possessing. You could not have passed him without noticing
him—without wondering who he was, confident he was somebody
—without admiring him, and feeling that there went a man it
would be interesting to know.
He was, indeed, charming to know ; he was the hero, the idol,
of a little sect of worshippers, young fellows who loved nothing
better than to sit at his feet. On the Rive Gauche, to be sure,
we are, for the most part, birds of passage ; a Student arrives,
tarries a little, then departs. So, with the exits and entrances of
seniors and nouveaux, the personnel of old Childe’s following varied
from season to season ; but numerically it remained pretty much
the same. He had a Studio, with a few living-rooms attached,
somewhere up in the fastnesses of Montparnasse, though it was
seldom thither that one went to seek him. He received athis cafe,
the Cafe Bleu—the Cafe Bleu which has since blown into the
monster cafe of the Quarter, the noisiest, the rowdiest, the most
flamboyant. But I am writing (alas) of twelve, thirteen, fifteen
years ago 5 in those days the Cafe Bleu consisted of a single
oblong room—with a sanded floor, a dozen tables, and two
waiters, Eugene and Hippolyte—where Madame Chanve, the
patronne, in lofty insulation behind her counter, reigned, if you
please, but where Childe, her principal dient, governed. The
bottom of the shop, at any rate, was reserved exclusively to his
use. There he dined, wrote his letters, dispensed his hospitalities;
he had his own piano there, if you can believe me, his foils and
boxing-gloves ; from the absinthe hour tili bed-time there was
his habitat, his den. And woe to the passing stranger who, mis-
taking the Cafe Bleu for an ordinary house of call, ventured,
during that consecrated period, to drop in. Nothing would be
said,
The Bohemian Girl
person radiating health, power, contentment, and the pride of
them : he was a sight worth seeing, spirited, picturesque, pre-
possessing. You could not have passed him without noticing
him—without wondering who he was, confident he was somebody
—without admiring him, and feeling that there went a man it
would be interesting to know.
He was, indeed, charming to know ; he was the hero, the idol,
of a little sect of worshippers, young fellows who loved nothing
better than to sit at his feet. On the Rive Gauche, to be sure,
we are, for the most part, birds of passage ; a Student arrives,
tarries a little, then departs. So, with the exits and entrances of
seniors and nouveaux, the personnel of old Childe’s following varied
from season to season ; but numerically it remained pretty much
the same. He had a Studio, with a few living-rooms attached,
somewhere up in the fastnesses of Montparnasse, though it was
seldom thither that one went to seek him. He received athis cafe,
the Cafe Bleu—the Cafe Bleu which has since blown into the
monster cafe of the Quarter, the noisiest, the rowdiest, the most
flamboyant. But I am writing (alas) of twelve, thirteen, fifteen
years ago 5 in those days the Cafe Bleu consisted of a single
oblong room—with a sanded floor, a dozen tables, and two
waiters, Eugene and Hippolyte—where Madame Chanve, the
patronne, in lofty insulation behind her counter, reigned, if you
please, but where Childe, her principal dient, governed. The
bottom of the shop, at any rate, was reserved exclusively to his
use. There he dined, wrote his letters, dispensed his hospitalities;
he had his own piano there, if you can believe me, his foils and
boxing-gloves ; from the absinthe hour tili bed-time there was
his habitat, his den. And woe to the passing stranger who, mis-
taking the Cafe Bleu for an ordinary house of call, ventured,
during that consecrated period, to drop in. Nothing would be
said,