So he has kept his blackguard ducal Zouave for the bouquet of this little show—the final bonne bouche in his bohemian menu—that he may make it palatable to those who only look upon the good old quartier latin (now no more to speak of) as a very low, common, vulgar quarter indeed, deservedly swept away, where misters the students (shocking bounders and cads) had nothing better to do, day and night, than mount up to a horrid place called the thatched house—la chaumière—
"Pour y danser le cancan
Ou le Robert Macaire—
Toujours—toujours—toujours—
La nuit comme le jour ...
Et youp! youp! youp!
Tra la la la la ... la la la!"
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Christmas was drawing near.
There were days when the whole quartier latin would veil its iniquities under fogs almost worthy of the Thames Valley between London Bridge and Westminster, and out of the studio window the prospect was a dreary blank. No morgue! no towers of Notre Dame! not even the chimney-pots over the way—not even the little mediæval toy turret at the corner of the Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres, Little Billee's delight!
The stove had to be crammed till its sides grew a dull deep red before one's fingers could hold a brush or squeeze a bladder; one had to box or fence at nine in the morning, that one might recover from the cold bath, and get warm for the rest of the day!
Taffy and the Laird grew pensive and dreamy, childlike and bland; and when they talked it was generally about Christmas at home in merry England and the distant land of cakes, and how good it was to be there at such a time—hunting, shooting, curling, and endless carouse!
It was Ho! for the jolly West Riding, and Hey! for the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee, till they grew quite homesick, and wanted to start by the very next train.