"Do you think such information will lead to any result?" asked Claude dubiously.
"I don't think. I am sure of it," retorted Tait impatiently. "Now go and dress."
Larcher departed without a word.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE UPPER BOHEMIA.
The name Bohemia is suggestive of unknown talent starving in garrets, of obdurate landladies, of bacchanalian nights, and shabby dress. Murger first invested the name with this flavor, and since his time the word has become polarized, and indicates nothing but struggling humanity and unappreciated genius. Yet your true Bohemian does not leave his country when he becomes rich and famous. It is true that he descends from the garret to the first floor; that he fares well and dresses decently; but he still dwells in Bohemia. The reckless air of the hovels permeates the palaces of this elastic kingdom of fancy.
Mrs. Durham was a Bohemian, and every Thursday received her confrères in the drawing room of a very elegant mansion in Chelsea. She had written a novel, "I Cling to Thee with Might and Main," and this having met with a moderate success, she posed as a celebrity, and set up her salon on the lines of Lady Blessington. Everyone who was anyone was received at her "At Homes," and by this process she gathered together a queer set of people. Some were clever, others were not; some were respectable, others decidedly disreputable; but one and all—to use an expression usually connected with crime—had done something. Novelists, essayists, painters, poets, and musicians were all to be found in her rooms, and a more motley collection could be seen nowhere else in London. Someone dubbed the Chelsea Mansions "The Zoo," and certainly animals of all kinds were to be found there, from monkeys to peacocks.
It was considered rather the thing to be invited to "The Zoo," so when brothers and sisters of the pen met one another there they usually said: "What! are you here?" as though the place were heaven, and the speaker justifiably surprised that anyone should be saved except himself or herself. Literary people love one another a degree less than Christians.