t and white kid gloves from the time you get up, (I confess I have
never seen you with them,)--is it you who propose to me to admit Henry
Murger as a contributor to the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,'--Henry Murger,
the ringleader of people who live by their wits?"

"Why shouldn't I? We live in a day when white cravats have to be very
respectful to red cravats. Besides, nothing is too strange to happen;
and I would not bet you that Murger does not write in 'Le Moniteur'
before I do."

"If you think I had better admit Henry Murger, I consent; but remember
what I say to you: It will be the source of annoyance to you."

The next day a hack bore Henry Murger and me from the corner of the
Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue du Helder to the office of the "Revue
des Deux Mondes." We talked on the way. If I had had any illusions left
of the poetical dreams and virginal thoughts of young men fevered by
literary ambition, these few minutes would have been enough to dispel
them all. Henry Murger thought of nothing upon earth but money. How was
he going to pay his quarter's rent, or rather his two or three quarters'
rent? for he was two or three quarters behindhand. He still had credit
with this _restaurateur_, but he owed so much to such another that he
dared not show his face there. He was over head and ears in debt to his
tailor. He was afraid to think of the amount of money he owed his
shoemaker. The list was long, and "bills payable" lamentable. To end
this dreary balance-sheet, I took it into my head to deliver him a
lecture on the morality of literature and the duty of literary men.
"Art," said I to him, "must escape the materialism which oppresses and
will at last absorb it. We romantics of 1828 were mistaken. We thought
we were reacting against the pagan and mummified school of the
eighteenth century and of the First Empire. We did not perceive that a
revolutionary Art can under no circumstances turn to the profit of grand
spiritual and Christian traditions, to the worship of the ideal, to the
elevation of intellects. We did not see that it would be a little sooner
or a little later discounted by literary demagogues, who, without
tradition, without a creed, without any law except their own whims,
would become the slaves of every base passion, and of all physical and
moral deformities. It is not yet too late. Let us repair our faults. Let
us elevate, let us regenerate literature; let us bear it aloft to those
noble spheres where