Such also is Jean Richepin, in spite of his sumptuous establishment on the Right Bank, a sort of Parisian Menelik, whose barbaric costumes and audacious exploits have entered as completely into the legendary lore of the Quarter as the explosive inconsistencies of Jules Vallès and the alternate aspirings and back-slidings of Paul Verlaine. In the early eighties, when he paraded the fantastic title of _Roi des Truands_ (King of the Vagrants), Richepin wore a talismanic bracelet and a curiously-shaped hat, as badges of his rank. “There was even,” says his fellow-Bohemian, Emile Goudeau, “an epic struggle between Jean Richepin and the poor but great caricaturist André Gill [a Bohemian by necessity] as to which of the two would root out of the hatteries of Paris the most bizarre head-dress. Now Gill and now Richepin had the advantage. The illustrious Sapeck was the judge of last resort, and awarded the palm to the victor.” It would take a long chapter to describe the costumes which have played a part in Richepin’s numerous and strange avatars. At one time, if the narrative of a friend can be trusted, he remained in hiding for almost a fortnight because his wardrobe was reduced to a simple window curtain; and his adventures have been so extraordinary that this ludicrous incident, improbable as it sounds, does not defy belief.
Richepin, Bouchor, and Paul Bourget, returning from “The Sherry Cobbler” one night, halted under the arcade of the _Odéon_, named themselves _Les Vivants_, and solemnly pledged each other eternal aid and fidelity. This was the period when Bourget’s ambition was poetry, when he wore pantaloons of water green, and imitated the miraculous cravats of Barbey d’Aurévilly and the mode of living of Balzac. “Bourget submitted himself,” says Goudeau, “to a ferocious Balzacian régime. He dined very early, went to bed immediately after, and had himself called on the stroke of 3 A.M..... The poet-recluse then drank two or three bowls of black coffee, like Balzac, and, like Balzac, worked until seven. Then he slept again for an hour, rose, for good this time, and applied himself to the bread-winning activities which poverty imposes on young littérateurs.”
Bourget, who began thus as a Bohemian from necessity, has ended as a snob. He is a fair sample of the “_arrivé_” who disavows his past, and