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and cushions there after dinner and lie on the lawn in the
shade of a tall hedge of roses. They talked and read all the
afternoon. They smoked cigarettes, which the Vicar did not
allow in the house; he thought smoking a disgusting habit,
and used frequently to say that it was disgraceful for anyone
to grow a slave to a habit. He forgot that he was himself a
slave to afternoon tea.
One day Miss Wilkinson gave Philip La Vie de Boheme.
She had found it by accident when she was rummaging
among the books in the Vicar’s study. It had been bought in
a lot with something Mr. Carey wanted and had remained
undiscovered for ten years.
Philip began to read Murger’s fascinating, ill-written,
absurd masterpiece, and fell at once under its spell. His soul
danced with joy at that picture of starvation which is so
good-humoured, of squalor which is so picturesque, of sor-
did love which is so romantic, of bathos which is so moving.
Rodolphe and Mimi, Musette and Schaunard! They wan-
der through the gray streets of the Latin Quarter, finding
refuge now in one attic, now in another, in their quaint cos-
tumes of Louis Philippe, with their tears and their smiles,
happy-go-lucky and reckless. Who can resist them? It is
only when you return to the book with a sounder judgment
that you find how gross their pleasures were, how vulgar
their minds; and you feel the utter worthlessness, as art-
ists and as human beings, of that gay procession. Philip was
enraptured.
‘Don’t you wish you were going to Paris instead of Lon-
don?’ asked Miss Wilkinson, smiling at his enthusiasm.

Of Human Bondage