Gautier, Gérard, and Houssaye have already been introduced, but a word must be said of the other two. Camille Rogier, who was as old as Gérard, was in Houssaye's opinion the most charming man in the world. Already an artist of some repute, he alone of the brotherhood was earning a living by his art—even more than a living, for was he not rich enough to buy riding-boots and wear coats of pink velvet? It was his departure for Constantinople in 1836, where he remained eight years painting the Eastern scenes which won him his chief fame, that caused the disruption of this Bohemian colony. Besides his mastery of the brush he was a very agreeable singer of chansons and ballads. Ourliac did not live in the Impasse du Doyenné, but with his parents in the Rue Saint Roch, and filled a small post in the office of the "Enfants Trouvés" which brought him £48 a year. But he never failed to call on his way to work in the morning, to recount a merry story, and on his way home he stayed with them many an hour. He, who in Houssaye's lines,
gai convive, arrivait en chantant
Ces chansons de Bagdad que Beauvoir aimait tant,
was the merriest of all the band, its Molière, says Houssaye elsewhere, ever sparkling with wit, an inexhaustible raconteur of inimitable dramatic power. He was a poet, too, a great student of German philosophy, and was at the time working upon "Suzanne," the first work which made his name heard in the world of literature.
It was a jolly life in the Impasse, though money was plentiful but rarely, and fortune had still to be wooed. They rose early in the morning, even after a bacchic evening, and when Théo joined them all four would set to their work, while the Pompadour salon was hardly yet awake in the morning sun, each singing the air which the new day found lingering in his head. Théo always painted or drew before he began to write, but his serious task was the composition of "Mademoiselle de Maupin," that masterpiece which was completed, sold for a beggarly £60, and published in the joyous days of Doyenné. Rogier was illustrating Hoffmann's "Tales" and Houssaye writing "La Pécheresse."
"L'un écrivait au coin du feu, l'autre rimait dans un hamac; Théo, tout en caressant les chats, calligraphiait d'admirables chapitres, couché sur le ventre; Gérard, toujours insaisissable, allait et venait avec la vague inquiétude des chercheurs qui ne trouvent pas."[23]
Gérard, his part in the foundation of la Bohème galante performed, felt under no compulsion to confine himself to the nest. His companions, indeed, saw little of his amiable countenance, for he wandered ceaselessly, often only returning when the night sky grew pale, to leave before it was fairly blue. He had a task, nevertheless, and that task was connected with his great romance. It is a story as pathetic as Charles Lamb's second love affair, and the woman who won his heart was also an actress. In the days of the cénacle Gérard had fallen desperately in love with Jenny Colon, of the Opéra Comique, an actress of not more than ordinary talent. It was a passion that went to the very roots of his being, an infatuation enriched by all his romantic mysticism. She was the goddess who ruled his dreams by night and day, and it was for her in anticipation that Gérard purchased his wonderful Renaissance bed with its salamanders and carved pillars. No room that Gérard ever possessed was large enough to hold this bed, which was always lodged with his friends, first in the Impasse, and then in other parts of Paris. They respected his frenzy, for the bed never had an occupant, and they kept it sacred till its deluded owner was obliged by straitened circumstances to part with it. Gérard's bed was the epitome of his life—a search for a phantom that his brain itself had fashioned. His Jenny Colon was a phantom, but the real Jenny, though her vulgar heart was unmoved by a shy poet's awkward homage, was not unwilling to accept his services. Commenting himself, in "La Bohème Galante," on Arsène Houssaye's stanza:
"D'où vous vient, ô Gérard! cet air académique?
Est-ce que les beaux yeux de l'Opéra Comique
S'allumeraient ailleurs? La reine de Saba,
Qui du roi Salomon entre vos bras tomba,
Ne serait-elle plus qu'une vaine chimère?"[24]
Et Gérard répondait: "Que la femme amère!"
wrote:
"La reine de Saba, c'était bien elle, en effet, qui me préoccupait alors—et doublement. Le fantôme éclatant de la fille des Hémiarites tourmentait mes nuits sous les hautes colonnes de ce grand lit sculpté, acheté en Touraine, et qui n'était pas encore garni de sa brocatelle rouge à ramages. Les salamandres de François Ier me versaient leur flamme du haut des corniches, où se jouaient des amours imprudents.... Qu'elle était belle! non pas plus belle cependant qu'une autre reine du matin dont l'image tourmentait mes journées. Cette dernière réalisait vivante mon rêve idéal et divin."
The question was to secure her début at the Opéra, and for that purpose Gérard undertook to write a libretto in verse for a "Reine de Saba" for which Meyerbeer, then at the height of his popularity, was to compose the music. This was the task upon which he was ostensibly engaged when he joined for an hour or two the other workers in the Impasse du Doyenné. For some reason or other the project never came to maturity, perhaps because Gérard could not work to order, perhaps because Jenny Colon married another. All that is left of the "Reine de Saba" is a fragment published later in Gérard's "Nuits de Rhamadan," and the whimsical reminiscence, from which I have quoted, in "La Bohème Galante." In the latter he goes on to explain the "academic air" which he assumed one festive evening when the Bohemians were amusing themselves with a costume ball. He alone was abstracted because he had an appointment with Meyerbeer at seven the next morning. But he could not escape an adventure. A fair mask who sat weeping in a corner of the room appealed to him to take her home. Her cavalier had deserted her for another and dismissed her rudely. Gérard took her out on the ground of the old riding-school hard by, where under the lime-trees they talked till the moon gave way to the dawn. The ball was almost over, and other masks found their way to this retreat. It was proposed to adjourn to an early breakfast in the Bois de Boulogne. No sooner said than done. The revellers set off joyously, Gérard's belle désolée opposing only a feeble resistance. But Gérard had his appointment, and wished to work on his scenario. In vain Camille Rogier rallied him on his desertion of the lady. Gérard was firm, and Rogier with a laugh offered her his disengaged arm. He departed, bidding Gérard farewell with mocking bow. And he had entertained her all the evening; poor Gérard! such was his fate. As he remarked: "J'avais quitté la proie pour l'ombre ... comme toujours!"