Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - II. Quartier Latin
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the Luxembourg Gardens, or a greedily enjoyed
hour of leisure in the Louvre Museum. No
friends. No dog. Not even a mistress. Henri
Murger’s “Vie de Bohême” was gone, but his
Mimi was still there, very much so, smilingly
strolling down the Boulevard St. Michel on the
arm of almost every student, when the hour for the
apéritif was approaching, or mending his coat or
washing his linen in his garret while he was
reading for his exam.
No Mimi for me! Yes, they could afford to
take it easy, these happy comrades of mine, to
spend their evenings in idle gossip at the tables
of their cafés, to laugh, to live, to love. Their
subtle Latin brain was far quicker than mine, and
they had no faded photograph of Capri on the
wall of their garret to spur them on, no columns
of precious marble waiting for them under the
sand at Palazzo al Mare. Often during the long
wakeful nights, as I sat there in the Hôtel de
l’Avenir, my head bent over Charcot’s ‘Maladies
du Système Nerveux,’ or Trousseaux’s ‘Clinique
de l’Hôtel Dieu,’ a terrible thought flashed
suddenly through my brain: Mastro Vincenzo is
old, fancy if he should die while I am sitting here
or sell to somebody else the little house on the
cliff, which holds the key to my future home!
An ice-cold perspiration burst out on my forehead
and my heart stood almost still with fear. I
stared at the faded photograph of Capri on the
wall, I thought I saw it fade away more and more
into dimness, mysterious and sphinx-like till
nothing remained but the outline of a sarcophagus,
under which lay buried a dream. . . . Then
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