, and said to him,--"See here, Murger, I must confess to you I was a
little angry with you; but your arithmetic is more literary than you
think it. You have given me a lesson of contemporary literature; and I
say to you, as the 'Revue des Deux Mondes' would say, 'Murger, we are
even!'"

I ran off without waiting for his reply, and whispered to myself, as I
went, "And yet Henry Murger is the most talented and the most honest of
them all!"

* * * * *

Let me continue the story of my misfortunes. The tempest was unchained
against me. It is true, there were among my adversaries some persons
under obligations to me,--some persons who were full of enthusiasm at my
first manner, and who would have made wry faces enough, had I published
their flattering letters to me,--other persons, to whom I had rendered
pecuniary services,--others, again, who had come to me with hat in hand
and supple knees, to beg my permission to allow them to dramatize my
novels. But what were these miserable considerations, when the great
interests of national literature, taste, and glory were at stake? I was
the vile detractor, the impious scorner of these glories, and it was but
justice that I should be put in the pillory and made the butt of rotten
eggs. Voltaire blasphemed, Beranger insulted, Victor Hugo outraged, were
offences which cried aloud for chastisement and for vengeance. Balzac's
shade especially complained and clamored for justice. It is true, that,
while Balzac was alive, he was not accustomed to anything like such
admiration. He openly avowed that he detested newspaper-writers, and
they returned the detestation with interest. Everybody, while he was
alive, declared him to be odd, eccentric, half-crazy, absurd. His
friends and his publishers, in fine, everybody who had anything to do
with him, told rather disreputable stories about him. No matter for
that. Balzac was dead, Balzac was a god, the god of all these
livers-by-the-wits, who but for him would have been atheists. Monsieur
Paulin Limayrac tore me to pieces in "La Presse." Monsieur Eugene
Pelletan shot me in "Le Siecle." Monsieur Taxile Delord mauled me in "Le
Charivari." To this episode of my exposition in the pillory belongs an
anecdote which I cannot omit.

I was about to set off for the country, where I reckoned upon spending
some weeks of the month of May, in order to recover somewhat from these
incessant attacks made upon me. I had read in a