For the future I shall compose my verses myself; and without waiting, since I feel in the humour, I shall manufacture some couplets to adapt my melody to." So saying, and taking his head between his hands, he assumed the grave attitude of a man who is having relations with the Muses.

After a few minutes of this sacred intercourse, he had produced one of those strings of nonsense-verses which the libretti-makers call, not without reason, monsters, and which they improvise very readily as a ground-work for the composer's inspiration.

Only Schaunard's were no nonsense-verses, but very good sense, expressing with sufficient clearness the inquietude awakened in his mind by the rude arrival of that date, the eighth of April.
Thus they ran: "Eight and eight make sixteen just, Put down six and carry one: My poor soul would be at rest Could I only find some one, Some honest poor relation, Who'd eight hundred francs advance, To pay each obligation, Whenever I've a chance." Chorus "And ere the clock on the last and fatal morning Should sound mid-day, To old Bernard, like a man who needs no warning, To old Bernard, like a man who needs no warning, To old Bernard, like a man who needs no warning, My rent I'd pay!" "The duece!" exclaimed Schaunard, reading over his composition, "one and some one--those rhymes are poor enough, but I have no time to make them richer.

Now let us try how the notes will unite with the syllables." And in his peculiarly frightful nasal tone he recommenced the execution of his ballad.

Satisfied with the result he had just obtained, Schaunard congratulated himself with an exultant grimace, which mounted over his nose like a circumflex accent whenever he had occasion to be pleased with himself.