n. They hear the
gold jingle before it is counted, and run with outstretched palms. Each
is in the depths of misfortune; on the eve of ascending the fatal slope;
lost, unless the helpful hand of Lampron will provide, saved if he will
lend wherewithal to buy a block of marble, to pay a model, to dine that
evening. He lends--I should say gives; the words mean the same in many
societies. Of all that he has gained, fame alone remains, and even this
he tries to do without--modest, retiring, shunning all entertainments.
I believe he would often be without the wherewithal to live were it not
for his mother, whom he supports, and who does him the kindness to need
something to live on. Madame Lampron does not hoard; she only fills the
place of those dams of cut turf which the peasants build in the channels
of the Berry in spring; the water passes over them, beneath them, even
through them, but still a little is left for the great droughts.

I love my friend Lampron, though fully aware of his superiority. His
energy sets me up, his advice strengthens me, he peoples for me the vast
solitude of Paris.

Suppose I go to see him? A lonely watch to-night would be gloomier than
usual. The death of the year brings gloomy thoughts, the thirty-first of
December, St. Sylvester's day--St. Sylvester! Why, that is his birthday!
Ungrateful friend, to give no thought to it! Quick! my coat, my stick,
my hat, and let me run to see these two early birds before they seek
their roost.

When I entered the studio, Lampron was so deep in his work that he did
not hear me. The large room, lighted only in one corner, looked weird
enough. Around me, and among the medley of pictures and casts and the
piles of canvases stacked against the wall, the eye encountered only
a series of cinder-gray tints and undetermined outlines casting long
amorphous shadows half-way across the ceiling. A draped lay figure
leaning against a door seemed to listen to the whistling of the wind
outside; a large glass bay opened upon the night. Nothing was alive in
this part of the room, nothing alight except a few rare glints upon
the gold of the frames, and the blades of two crossed swords. Only in
a corner, at the far end, at a distance exaggerated by the shadows, sat
Lampron engraving, solitary, motionless, beneath the light of a lamp.
His back was toward me. The lamp's rays threw a strong light on his
delicate hand, on the workmanlike pose of his head, which it surrounded
with