n schools;
on the chimney shelf there were but two brass candlesticks, with or
without tallow candles in them, and our two pipes with some tobacco in a
pouch or strewn abroad, also the little piles of cigar-ash left there by
our visitors or ourselves.

A pair of calico curtains hung from the brass window rods, and on each
side of the window was a small bookcase in cherry-wood, such as every
one knows who has stared into the shop windows of the Quartier Latin,
and in which we kept the few books necessary for our studies.

The ink in the inkstand was always in the state of lava congealed in the
crater of a volcano. May not any inkstand nowadays become a Vesuvius?
The pens, all twisted, served to clean the stems of our pipes; and, in
opposition to all the laws of credit, paper was even scarcer than coin.

How can young men be expected to stay at home in such furnished
lodgings? The students studied in the cafes, the theatre, the Luxembourg
gardens, in _grisettes'_ rooms, even in the law schools--anywhere rather
than in their horrible rooms--horrible for purposes of study, delightful
as soon as they were used for gossiping and smoking in. Put a cloth on
the table, and the impromptu dinner sent in from the best eating-house
in the neighborhood--places for four--two of them in petticoats--show
a lithograph of this "Interior" to the veriest bigot, and she will be
bound to smile.

We thought only of amusing ourselves. The reason for our dissipation lay
in the most serious facts of the politics of the time. Juste and I could
not see any room for us in the two professions our parents wished us to
take up. There are a hundred doctors, a hundred lawyers, for one that is
wanted. The crowd is choking these two paths which are supposed to lead
to fortune, but which are merely two arenas; men kill each other there,
fighting, not indeed with swords or fire-arms, but with intrigue and
calumny, with tremendous toil, campaigns in the sphere of the intellect
as murderous as those in Italy were to the soldiers of the Republic. In
these days, when everything is an intellectual competition, a man must
be able to sit forty-eight hours on end in his chair before a table, as
a General could remain for two days on horseback and in his saddle.

The throng of aspirants has necessitated a division of the Faculty of
Medicine into categories. There is the physician who writes and the
physician who practises, the political physician, and the physici