u, before whom I need wear no draperies, I had that
ground-bed of good feeling and keen sensitiveness which must always be
the birthright of any man who is strong enough to climb to any height
whatever, after having long trampled in the bogs of poverty. I could
obtain nothing from my family, nor from my home, beyond my inadequate
allowance. In short, at that time, I breakfasted off a roll which the
baker in the Rue du Petit-Lion sold me cheap because it was left from
yesterday or the day before, and I crumbled it into milk; thus my
morning meal cost me but two sous. I dined only every other day in a
boarding-house where the meal cost me sixteen sous. You know as well
as I what care I must have taken of my clothes and shoes. I hardly know
whether in later life we feel grief so deep when a colleague plays us
false as we have known, you and I, on detecting the mocking smile of a
gaping seam in a shoe, or hearing the armhole of a coat split, I drank
nothing but water; I regarded a cafe with distant respect. Zoppi's
seemed to me a promised land where none but the Lucullus of the _pays
Latin_ had a right of entry. 'Shall I ever take a cup of coffee there
with milk in it?' said I to myself, 'or play a game of dominoes?'

"I threw into my work the fury I felt at my misery. I tried to master
positive knowledge so as to acquire the greatest personal value,
and merit the position I should hold as soon as I could escape from
nothingness. I consumed more oil than bread; the light I burned during
these endless nights cost me more than food. It was a long duel,
obstinate, with no sort of consolation. I found no sympathy anywhere.
To have friends, must we not form connections with young men, have a
few sous so as to be able to go tippling with them, and meet them
where students congregate? And I had nothing! And no one in Paris
can understand that nothing means _nothing_. When I even thought of
revealing my beggary, I had that nervous contraction of the throat which
makes a sick man believe that a ball rises up from the oesophagus into
the larynx.

"In later life I have met people born to wealth who, never having wanted
for anything, had never even heard this problem in the rule of three:
A young man is to crime as a five-franc piece is to X.--These gilded
idiots say to me, 'Why did you get into debt? Why did you involve
yourself in such onerous obligations?' They remind me of the princess
who, on hearing that the people lacked bread,