ing pledged but rags and tatters, our clothes will
glitter like barbaric pearl and gold.' Alas! the pawnbroker in the
Rue du Fouare was as cruel as his brethren. So the next morning in
sheer despair I went to pledge my only frock-coat, and I did this
to lend half the sum to that incessant borrower, G----. Lastly, on
the nineteenth of November, we sold some books. Fortune smiled on
us; we had a chicken-soup with a superabundance of laurel. Do you
remember an excellent shopkeeper of the Rue du Faubourg Saint
Jacques, near the city-gate, who, we were told, not only sold
thread, but kept a circulating library? What a circulating library
it was! Plays, three odd volumes of Anne Radcliffe's novels,--and
if the old lady had never made our acquaintance, the inhabitants
of the Faubourg Saint Jacques would never have known of the
existence of 'Letters upon Mythology' and 'De Profundis,' two
books I was heartless enough to sell, notwithstanding all their
titles to my respect. The authors were born in the same
neighborhood which gave me birth: one is Desmoustiers, the other
Alfred Mousse. Maybe Arsene Houssaye would not be pleased, were I
to remind him of one of the _crimes_ of his youth, where one sees
for a frontispiece skeletons--'twas the heyday of the Romantic
School--playing tenpins with skulls for balls! The sale of 'De
Profundis' enabled us to visit Cafe Tabourey that evening. You
sold soon afterwards eighty cents' worth of books. Allow me to
record that they came from your library; my library remained
constantly upon the shelves; notwithstanding all your appeals, I
never sold any books, except the lamentable history of Alfred
Mousse. Monsieur Credit contrived to go to the tradesmen's with
imperturbable coolness; he went everywhere until the first of
December, when he paid every cent of debt. I have but one regret,
and this is, that the little account-book suddenly ceases after a
month; it contains only the month of November. This is not enough!
Had I continued it, Its pages would have been so many mementos to
recall my past life to me."

Monsieur Champfleury introduced Henry Murger to Monsieur Arsene
Houssaye, who was then chief editor of "L'Artiste," and it happened
oddly enough that Murger wrote nothing but poetry for this journal.
Monsieur Houssaye took a great fancy to Murger, and persuaded hi