myself;
and yet, when I was attacked and harassed on every side, he hid himself
under a pseudonyme, and added his sarcasms to all the others directed
against me, that he might gratify his admiration for De Balzac and put a
little money in his pocket.

By-and-by I continued to meet Henry Murger again on the Boulevard, and
at the first performance of new pieces. Do you imagine he shunned me?
Not a bit of it. He did not seem on these rare occasions to feel the
least embarrassment. He gave me cordial shakes of the hand, or he
bestowed on me one of those profound bows which brought his bald head on
a level with his waistcoat-pockets. Then he published a novel in "Le
Moniteur," after which he was decorated. Nothing was now heard from or
of him for a long time. Not a line by Henry Murger appeared anywhere. I
never heard that any piece by him was received, or even refused, by a
single one of the eighteen theatres in Paris. At last I met him one day
before the Varietes Theatre. I went up to speak to him, and ended by
asking the invariable question between literary men,--"What are you at
work on now? How comes it that so long a time has elapsed since you gave
us something to read or to applaud?"

"I will tell you why," he replied, with melancholy _sang-froid_. "It is
not a question of literature, it is a question of arithmetic. I owe
eight hundred dollars to Madame Porcher, the wife of the
'authors'-tickets' dealer, who is always ready to advance money to
dramatic authors, and to whom we are all constantly in debt. I owe four
hundred dollars to the 'Moniteur,' and three hundred dollars to the
'Revue des Deux Mondes.' Follow my reasoning now: Were I to bring out a
play, my excellent friend, Madame Porcher, would lay hands on all the
proceeds, and I should receive nothing. Were I to give a novel to the
'Moniteur,' I should have to write twenty _feuilletons_ (you know they
pay twenty dollars a _feuilleton_ there) before I cancelled my old debt.
Were I to contribute to the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' as soon as my six
sheets (at fifty dollars a sheet, that would be three hundred dollars)
were printed and published, the editor would say to me, 'We are even
now.' So you see that it would be unpardonable prodigality on my part to
publish anything; therefore I have determined not to work at all, in
order to avoid spending my money, and I am lazy--from economy!"

His reply disarmed the little resentment I had left. I took his hand in
mine