“But for young men of genius, like Horace and Theophile...”

“Make yourself quite easy, mon cher.  A little privation will do them no kind of harm.  They belong to that class of whom it has been said that ’they would borrow money from Harpagon, and find truffles on the raft of the Medusa.’  But hold! we are at the end of our breakfast.  What say you?  Shall we take our demi-tasse in the next room, among our fellow-students of physic and the fine arts?”

CHAPTER XXX.

A MAN WITH A HISTORY.

The society of the outer salon differed essentially from the society of the inner salon at the Cafe Procope.  It was noisier—­it was shabbier—­it was smokier.  The conversation in the inner salon was of a general character on the whole, and, as one caught sentences of it here and there, seemed for the most part to relate to the literature and news of the day—­to the last important paper in the Revue des Deux Mondes, to the new drama at the Odeon, or to the article on foreign politics in the Journal des Debats.  But in the outer salon the talk was to the last degree shoppy, and overflowed with the argot of the studios.  Some few medical students were clustered, it is true, in a corner near the door; but they were so outnumbered by the artists at the upper end of the room, that these latter seemed to hold complete possession, and behaved more like the members of a recognised club than the casual customers of a cafe.  They talked from table to table.  They called the waiters by their Christian names.  They swaggered up and down the middle of the room with their hats on their heads, their hands in their pockets, and their pipes in their mouths, as coolly as if it were the broad walk of the Luxembourg gardens.

And the appearance of these gentlemen was not less remarkable than their deportment.  Their hair, their beards, their clothes, were of the wildest devising.  They seemed one and all to have started from a central idea, that central idea being to look as unlike their fellow-men as possible; and thence to have diverged into a variety that was nothing short of infinite.  Each man had evidently modelled himself upon his own ideal, and no two ideals were alike.  Some were picturesque, some were grotesque; and some, it must be admitted, were rather dirty ideals, into the realization of which no such paltry considerations as those of soap, water, or brushes were permitted to enter.

Here, for instance, were Roundhead crops and flowing locks of Cavalier redundancy—­steeple-crowned hats, and Roman cloaks draped bandit-fashion—­moustachios frizzed and brushed up the wrong way in the style of Louis XIV.—­pointed beards and slouched hats, after the manner of Vandyke—–­patriarchal beards a la Barbarossa—­open collars, smooth chins, and long undulating locks of the Raffaelle type—­coats, blouses, paletots of inconceivable cut, and all kinds of unusual colors—­in a word, every eccentricity of clothing, short of fancy costume, in which it was practicable for men of the nineteenth century to walk abroad and meet the light of day.