This passage, like sundry others already cited, is taken from the dramatization of the “Scenes of Bohemian Life,” which was, as we have seen, made by Murger in collaboration with Théodore Barrière, and was extremely successful. It differs in many particulars from the book, the scattered scenes of which are reduced to coherence and unity, but the male characters preserve their general traits.
The “Norman uncle” very possibly stands for Schaune’s father, the toy-manufacturer, to whose business he presently succeeded.
Schaunard plays his part to the amusement, if not always to the edification, of the reader in many delightful episodes in the “Scenes.” It is through his misadventures with his landlord that the establishment of the club is largely, though indirectly, brought about; it is he who paints the provincial Blancheron’s portrait in fancy dressing-gown, while Marcel goes off to dine with a deputy in his—the said Blancheron’s—coat; it is he, again, who is hired by an Englishman to play the piano from morning till night, as a means of getting even with an actress living near by, whose parrot and shrill declamation combined, have proved rather too much for even British nerves,—a transaction out of which, we need scarcely add, the _virtuoso_ made a good deal more money than he did from his famous symphony. On the whole, however, of the four friends with whose doings our volume is mainly occupied, Schaunard is by far the least attractive figure. He is coarse and morose; has a harsh, rasping voice; is apt to be put out about trifles; sometimes treats his male friends with scant courtesy; and has an unpleasant habit of employing, with his more intimate associates of the other sex, Captain Marryatt’s _argumentum ad feminam_—in other words, of conversing with them occasionally through the medium of a stout cane. Poor Phémie—the melancholy Phémie—had every right more than once or twice to complain of the strength and efficacy of his logic; nor were matters made very much better for her, we may opine, when, after one of their quarrels, he gave her in grim joke, and as a keepsake, the stick with which he had addressed to her so many telling remarks.