Act II. A meeting of streets, where they form a square, with shops of

all sorts, and the Café Momus. The square is filled with a happy Christmas eve crowd. Somewhat aloof from this are _Rudolph_ and _Mimi_. _Colline_ stands near the shop of a clothes dealer. _Schaunard_ is haggling with a tinsmith over the price of a horn. _Marcel_ is chaffing the girls who jostle against him in the crowd.

There are street venders crying their wares; citizens, students, and work girls, passing to and fro and calling to each other; people at the café giving orders--a merry whirl, depicted in the music by snatches of chorus, bits of recitative, and an instrumental accompaniment that runs through the scene like a many-coloured thread, and holds the pattern together.

_Rudolph_ and _Mimi_ enter a bonnet shop. The animation outside continues. When the two lovers come out of the shop, _Mimi_ is wearing a new bonnet trimmed with roses. She looks about.

"What is it?" _Rudolph_ asks suspiciously.

"Are you jealous?" asks _Mimi_.

"The man in love is always jealous."

_Rudolph's_ friends are at a table outside the café. _Rudolph_ joins them with _Mimi_. He introduces her to them as one who will make their party complete, for he "will play the poet, while she's the muse incarnate."

_Parpignol_, the toy vender, crosses the square and goes off, followed by children, whose mothers try to restrain them. The toy vender is heard crying his wares in the distance. The quartet of Bohemians, now a quintet through the accession of _Mimi_, order eatables and wine.

Shopwomen, who are going away, look down one of the streets, and exclaim over someone whom they see approaching.

"'Tis Musetta! My, she is gorgeous!--Some stammering old dotard is with her."

_Musetta_ and _Marcel_ have loved, quarrelled, and parted. She has recently put up with the aged but wealthy _Alcindoro de Mittoneaux_, who, when she comes upon the square, is out of breath trying to keep up with her.

Despite _Musetta's_ and _Marcel's_ attempt to appear indifferent to each other's presence, it is plain that they are not so. _Musetta_ has a chic waltz song, "Quando me'n vo soletta per la via" (As through the streets I wander onward merrily), one of the best-known numbers of the score, which she deliberately sings at _Marcel_, to make him aware, without arousing her aged gallant's suspicions, that she still loves him.

[Music]

Feigning that a shoe hurts her, she makes the ridiculous _Alcindoro_ unlatch and remove it, and trot off with it to the cobbler's. She and _Marcel_ then embrace, and she joins the five friends at their table, and the expensive supper ordered by _Alcindoro_ is served to them with their own.

The military tattoo is heard approaching from the distance. There is great confusion in the square. A waiter brings the bill for the Bohemians' order. _Schaunard_ looks in vain for his purse. _Musetta_ comes to the rescue. "Make one bill of the two orders. The gentleman who was with me will pay it."

The patrol enters, headed by a drum major. _Musetta_, being without her shoe, cannot walk, so _Marcel_ and _Colline_ lift her between them to their shoulders, and carry her through the crowd, which, sensing the humour of the situation, gives her an ovation, then swirls around _Alcindoro_, whose foolish, senile figure, appearing from the direction of the cobbler's shop with a pair of shoes for _Musetta_, it greets with jeers. For his gay ladybird has fled with her friends from the _Quartier_, and left him to pay all the bills.