ized and refused to release him. His patrimonial
estate was worth thirty thousand dollars; ignorant of business, he sold
it below its true value, and, instead of placing the capital out at
interest, he put it in his pocket and dissipated it in those taxes, as
varied as old feudal burdens, which the poor, uncomprehended men of
genius levy on their wealthy brethren. One day it went in dinners given
to brethren who deliver diplomas of genius; another day it went in money
lent to Grub-Street penny-a-liners who were starving; again it went to
found petty newspapers established to demolish old reputations and raise
new ones, and to die of inanition at their fifth number for want of a
sixth subscriber. In fine, before three years had passed away, not a
cent was left of Monsieur Philoxene Boyer's estate, and in return he had
acquired neither talents nor fame. He is scarcely thirty years old: he
looks like a man of sixty. I know no man in the world who, for the hope
of half a million of dollars and a place in the French Academy, would
consent to bear the burden of tortures, privations, and humiliations
which make up Monsieur Philoxene Boyer's existence. He undergoes the
torments of the damned; he fasts; he flounders in all the sewers of
Paris. But he is riveted to this horrible existence as the galley-slave
to his chain; he can breathe no other air than this mephitic atmosphere;
he can lead no other life. When I saw him on the threshold of that
sombre and humid reading-room, muddied, wet, pale, thin, almost in rags,
I could not help thinking of this wretched galley-slave of literary
ambition as he might have been at home in his old Norman mansion, cozily
stretched before a blazing fire, with a cellar full of cider and a
larder groaning beneath the fat of that favored land, smiling at a young
wife on whose lap merry children were gambolling. He was in the vein of
bitter frankness. He had not dined the preceding day. He seized me by
the arm, and, dragging me out of the circulating-library, said to me, in
a voice as abrupt as a feverish pulsation,--

"Don't listen to that old hag! All the books she offers you are
miserable stuff, fit at best for the pastry-cooks. Oh! you don't know
how success is won nowadays. I'll tell you. There is an assurance
society between the book, the piece, and the judge. Praise me, and I'll
praise you. If you will praise us, we will praise you. The public buys."

Then he went on with his bitter voice to u