"What is it?" Rudolph asks suspiciously.
"Are you jealous?" asks Mimi.
"The man in love is always jealous."
Rudolph's friends are at a table outside the café. Rudolph joins them with Mimi. He introduces her to them as one who will make their party complete, for he "will play the poet, while she's the muse incarnate."
Parpignol, the toy vender, crosses the square and goes off, followed by children, whose mothers try to restrain them. The toy vender is heard crying his wares in the distance. The quartet of Bohemians, now a quintet through the accession of Mimi, order eatables and wine.
Shopwomen, who are going away, look down one of the streets, and exclaim over someone whom they see approaching.
"'Tis Musetta! My, she is gorgeous!—Some stammering old dotard is with her."
Musetta and Marcel have loved, quarrelled, and parted. She has recently put up with the aged but wealthy Alcindoro de Mittoneaux, who, when she comes upon the square, is out of breath trying to keep up with her.
Despite Musetta's and Marcel's attempt to appear indifferent to each other's presence, it is plain that they are not so. Musetta has a chic waltz song, "Quando me'n vo soletta per la via" (As through the streets I wander onward merrily), one of the best-known numbers of the score, which she deliberately sings at Marcel, to make him aware, without arousing her aged gallant's suspicions, that she still loves him.