ution. His rustic life repaired some of the
damage wrought, and would probably have entirely retrieved it, had his
life then been freer from care, less visited by privation. Had the money
the Government and his friends lavished on his corpse been bestowed on
him living, he had probably still been numbered among the writers
militant of France. Some obscure parasite got the pension. He continued
to work on still hounded by debt. "Five times a week," he wrote in 1858,
"I dine at twelve or one o'clock at night. One thing is certain: if I am
not forced to stop writing for three or four days, I shall fall sick."
In 1860 we find him complaining that he is "sick in soul, and _maybe in
body too_. I am, of a truth, fatigued, and a great deal more fatigued
than people think me." Death's shadow was upon him. The world thought
him in firmer health and in gayer spirits than ever. He knew better. He
felt as the traveller feels towards the close of the day and the end of
the journey. It was not strange that the world was deceived, for
Murger's gayety had always been factitious. He often turned off grief
with a smile, where other men relieve it with a tear. Sensitive natures
shrink from letting the world see their exquisite sensibility. Besides,
Murger's gayety was intellectual rather than physical. It consisted
almost entirely in bright gleams of repartee. It was quickness, 'twas
not mirth. No wonder, then, that the world was deceived; the mind
retained its old activity amid all its fatigue; and besides, the world
sees men only in their hours of full-dress, when the will lights up the
leaden eyes and wreathes the drawn countenance in smiles. Tears are for
our midnight pillow,--the hand-buried face for our solitary study.

So when the rumor flew over Paris, Murger is sick!--Murger is
dying!--Murger is dead! it raised the greatest surprise. Everybody
wondered how the stalwart man they saw yesterday could be brought low so
soon. Where was his youth, that it came not to the rescue? The reader
can answer the question. Of a truth, the last act of the drama we have
sketched in these pages moved rapidly to the catastrophe. He awoke in
the middle of one night with a violent pain in the thigh, which ached as
if a red-hot ball had passed through it. The pain momentarily increased
in violence, and became intolerable. The nearest physician was summoned.
After diagnosis, he declared the case too grave for action until after
consultation. Another medi