“And how many others!  Oh, truly, you may well speak of Bohemia with contempt.  But your fashionable doctor’s clientele, oh sublime Jenkins, consists of that very thing alone.  The Bohemia of commerce, of finance, of politics; unclassed people, shady people of all castes, and the higher one ascends the more you find of them, because rank gives impunity and wealth can pay for rude silence.”

She spoke with a hard tone, greatly excited, with lip curled by a savage disdain.  The doctor forced a laugh and assumed a light, condescending tone, repeating:  “Ah, feather-brain, feather-brain!” And his glance, anxious and beseeching, sought the Nabob, as though to demand his pardon for all these paradoxical impertinences.

But Jansoulet, far from appearing vexed, was so proud of posing to this handsome artist, so appreciative of the honour that was being done him, that he nodded his head approvingly.

“She is right, Jenkins,” said he at last, “she is right.  It is we who are the true Bohemia.  Take me, for example; take Hemerlingue, two of the men who handle the most money in Paris.  When I think of the point from which we started, of all the trades through which we have made our way.  Hemerlingue, once keeper of a regimental canteen.  I, who have carried sacks of wheat in the docks of Marseilles for my living.  And the strokes of luck by which our fortunes have been built up—­as all fortunes, moreover, in these times are built up.  Go to the Bourse between three and five.  But, pardon, mademoiselle, see, through my absurd habit of gesticulating when I speak, I have lost the pose.  Come, is this right?”

“It is useless,” said Felicia.  A true daughter of an artist, of a genial and dissolute artist, thoroughly in the romantic tradition, as was Sebastien Ruys.  She had never known her mother.  She was the fruit of one of those transient loves which used to enter suddenly into the bachelor life of the sculptor like swallows into a dovecote of which the door is always open, and who leave it again because no nest can be built there.

This time, the lady, ere she flew away, had left to the great artist, then about forty years of age, a beautiful child whom he had brought up, and who became the joy and the passion of his life.  Until she was thirteen, Felicia had lived in her father’s house, introducing a childish and tender note into that studio full of idlers, models, and huge greyhounds lying at full length on the couches.  There was a corner reserved for her, for her attempts at sculpture, a whole miniature equipment, a tripod, wax, etc., and old Ruys would cry to those who entered: 

“Don’t go there.  Don’t move anything.  That is the little one’s corner.”