Excerpt from Scenes de la vie de boheme

Taken from the Lyric's Opera Notes of this season's performance of Boheme

At the Cafe Momus
"Gustave Colline the great philosopher, Marcel the great painter, Schaunard the great musician, and Rodolphe the great poet, so they regularly addressed each other, patronized the Cafe Momus, where they were spoken of as the four musketeers, as they were always seen together; indeed, they came and went together, played together, and sometimes too did not pay their bill together, always with a harmony worthy of the conservatory orchestra.

They had elected to forgather in a room where forty persons had been comfortable, but they were always found alone, for they had succeeded in making the place insupportable to the habitual visitors.

The passing guest who ventured into this den from the moment of his entrance became the victim of this wild quartet, and most of the time fled before he got hold of a newspaper or of his after-dinner coffee, the cream of which was often turned by the strange epigrams on art, sentiment, and political economy. The conversations of the four friends were of such a character that the waiter who was in the habit of serving them had gone crazy in the flower of his youth."

(Translations by Elizabeth Ward Hugus, published by Peregrine Smith Books, 1988)