e fourteen dollars lasted; so you bought a
soup-pot which cost fifteen cents, some thyme and some laurel:
being a poet, you had such a marked weakness for laurel, you used
to poison all the soup with it. We laid in a supply of potatoes,
and constantly bought tobacco, coffee, and sugar. There was
gnashing of teeth and curses when the expenses of the fourth of
November were written. Why did you let me go out with my pockets
so full of money? And you went to Dagneaux's and spent five cents.
What in the name of Heaven could you have gotten at Dagneaux's for
five cents?[C] Good me! how expensive are the least pleasures!
Upon pretext of going with a free-ticket to see a drama by an
inhabitant of Belleville, I bought two omnibus-tickets, one to go
and the other to return. Two omnibus-tickets! I was severely
punished for this prodigality. Seventy-four cents ran away from
me, making their escape through a hole in my pocket. How could I
dare to return home and confront your wrath? Two omnibus-tickets
alone would have brought a severe admonition on my head; but
seventy-four cents with them--! If I had not begun to disarm you
by telling you the Belleville drama, I should have been a doomed
man. Nevertheless, the next day, without thinking of these
terrible losses, we lent G---- money; he really seemed to look
upon us as Messrs. Murger and Co., his bankers. I wonder by what
insidious means this G---- contrived to captivate our confidence,
and the only solution I can discover is the inexperience of giddy
youth; for two days afterwards G---- was audacious enough to
reappear and to ask for another loan. Nothing new appears on the
pages of the book, except fifteen cents for wine: this must have
been one of your ideas: I do not mean to say that you were ever a
wine-bibber, but we were so accustomed to water, we drank so much
water without getting tired of it, that this item, 'wine,' seems
very extraordinary to me. We added up every page until the eighth
of November, when the sum total reached eight dollars and twelve
cents; here the additions ceased. We doubtless were averse to
trembling at the sight of the total. The tenth of November, you
purchased a thimble: some men have skill enough to mend their
clothes at their leisure moments. A few days ago I paid a visit to
a charming literary man, who w