e knew by this time how matters stood. The furniture was
attached. The tailor and dressmaker no longer stood in awe of the
journalist, and proceeded to extremes; and at last no one, with the
exception of the pork-butcher and the druggist, gave the two unlucky
children credit. For a week or more all three of them--Lucien,
Berenice, and the invalid--were obliged to live on the various
ingenious preparations sold by the pork-butcher; the inflammatory diet
was little suited to the sick girl, and Coralie grew worse. Sheer want
compelled Lucien to ask Lousteau for a return of the loan of a
thousand francs lost at play by the friend who had deserted him in his
hour of need. Perhaps, amid all his troubles, this step cost him most
cruel suffering.

Lousteau was not to be found in the Rue de la Harpe. Hunted down like
a hare, he was lodging now with this friend, now with that. Lucien
found him at last at Flicoteaux's; he was sitting at the very table at
which Lucien had found him that evening when, for his misfortune, he
forsook d'Arthez for journalism. Lousteau offered him dinner, and
Lucien accepted the offer.

As they came out of Flicoteaux's with Claude Vignon (who happened to
be dining there that day) and the great man in obscurity, who kept his
wardrobe at Samanon's, the four among them could not produce enough
specie to pay for a cup of coffee at the Cafe Voltaire. They lounged
about the Luxembourg in the hope of meeting with a publisher; and, as
it fell out, they met with one of the most famous printers of the day.
Lousteau borrowed forty francs of him, and divided the money into four
equal parts.

Misery had brought down Lucien's pride and extinguished sentiment; he
shed tears as he told the story of his troubles, but each one of his
comrades had a tale as cruel as his own; and when the three versions
had been given, it seemed to the poet that he was the least
unfortunate among the four. All of them craved a respite from
remembrance and thoughts which made trouble doubly hard to bear.

Lousteau hurried to the Palais Royal to gamble with his remaining nine
francs. The great man unknown to fame, though he had a divine
mistress, must needs hie him to a low haunt of vice to wallow in
perilous pleasure. Vignon betook himself to the _Rocher de Cancale_ to
drown memory and thought in a couple of bottles of Bordeaux; Lucien
parted company with him on the threshold, declining to share that
supper. When he shook hands with th