These amateur publications (in which, for the matter of that, nearly every one who counts in French literature has made his début) are not burdened with modesty. Witness the closing paragraph of the leading editorial of the first, last, and only number of the Royal-Bohème:—
“Our aim is to demand charity of those who, having intelligence and heart, will not see in us a band of useless beggars; our hope, to more than repay our benefactors with the fruits of our thoughts and the flowers of our dreams.”
For a naïve and concrete statement of the revolutionist’s pet formula, “From every one according to his ability and to every one according to his need,” or as an example of what would be called, in good American, “unmitigated nerve,” the above would be hard to match.
An anonymous writer has defined the Bohemian as “a person who sees with his own eyes, hears with his own ears, thinks his own thoughts, follows the lead of his own heart, and holds to the realities of life wherever they conflict with its conventions.” The typical Bohemian student of Paris is a Bohemian of this sort. He loves his comfort as well as another fellow, but he is not ready to sell his soul for it. Material well-being at the price of submission—moral, social, or political—he will none of. Practical considerations do not count with him when they antagonise his ideals.
A LATIN QUARTER TYPE
In his monumental Illusions Perdues, Balzac describes at length a Latin Quarter cénacle of nine persons, of which his hero, the poet Lucien de Rubempré, became a member. Among other things, he says:—
“In this cold mansard the finest dreams of sentiment were realised. Here brothers, all equally strong in different regions of knowledge, enlightened each other in good faith, telling one another everything, even their base thoughts,—all of an immense instruction, and all tested in the crucible of want.” Something of the beautiful earnestness of these ideal and idealised Bohemians of Balzac has laid hold on the Bohemian student of to-day. Like the members of this mansard cénacle, he is seeking conscientiously and eagerly for a comprehensive formula of life.
“The student is thinking,” writes an actual student, in answer to the charges of materialism, dilettanteism, and subserviency brought against the student body. “His thought is fermenting, trying its force, preparing the future. The present hour is grave, an hour of transition. In literature, in art, in politics, something new is desired, expected, sought after. Everywhere is chaos. Everywhere opposing elements clash. A general synthesis or an exclusive choice from which harmony may spring is called for. What are the laws of this synthesis, what is the criterion of this choice? These are the questions which, anxiously, without ceasing, and, perhaps, in spite of himself, the contemporary youth is asking.”