earned some seven francs a
week. To save her son the embarrassment of seeing his mother reduced
to this humble position, she assumed the name of Madame Charlotte; and
persons requiring her services were requested to apply to M. Postel,
M. Chardon's successor in the business. Lucien's sister worked for a
laundress, a decent woman much respected in L'Houmeau, and earned
fifteen daily sous. As Mme. Prieur's forewoman she had a certain
position in the workroom, which raised her slightly above the class of
working-girls.

The two women's slender earnings, together with Mme. Chardon's three
hundred francs of _rentes_, amounted to about eight hundred francs a
year, and on this sum three persons must be fed, clothed, and lodged.
Yet, with all their frugal thrift, the pittance was scarcely
sufficient; nearly the whole of it was needed for Lucien. Mme. Chardon
and her daughter Eve believed in Lucien as Mahomet's wife believed in
her husband; their devotion for his future knew no bounds. Their
present landlord was the successor to the business, for M. Postel let
them have rooms at the further end of a yard at the back of the
laboratory for a very low rent, and Lucien slept in the poor garret
above. A father's passion for natural science had stimulated the boy,
and at first induced him to follow in the same path. Lucien was one of
the most brilliant pupils at the grammar school of Angouleme, and when
David Sechard left, his future friend was in the third form.

When chance brought the school-fellows together again, Lucien was
weary of drinking from the rude cup of penury, and ready for any of
the rash, decisive steps that youth takes at the age of twenty.
David's generous offer of forty francs a month if Lucien would come to
him and learn the work of a printer's reader came in time; David had
no need whatever of a printer's reader, but he saved Lucien from
despair. The ties of a school friendship thus renewed were soon drawn
closer than ever by the similarity of their lot in life and the
dissimilarity of their characters. Both felt high swelling hopes of
manifold success; both consciously possessed the high order of
intelligence which sets a man on a level with lofty heights, consigned
though they were socially to the lowest level. Fate's injustice was a
strong bond between them. And then, by different ways, following each
his own bent of mind, they had attained to poesy. Lucien, destined for
the highest speculative fields of nat