; and
when does the determination give way in the breast of him who feels and
knows his power equal to his aim? I had a brother, to whom I wrote,
telling him of my situation, and asking him for the loan of a few
louis-d'or until my studies were completed, when I promised to repay the
debt with interest. He sent me the quarter of the sum for which I had
begged, with a long cold letter of remonstrance, bidding me give up my
profession, and apply myself to the humbler pursuits of my family. I
returned to my brother both money and letter, and the day on which I did
so saw me without a meal. I had not a farthing in the world. Had not a
woman who lodged in a room below given me a crust of bread, I must have
committed crime to assuage the cries of nature. How I existed for days,
I no longer remember. But I remember well hearing of a rich nobleman,
renowned for his wealth and piety, and for all the virtues which the
world confers upon the possessor of vast estates. In a moment of
enthusiasm and mistaken reliance, I sat down and penned a petition to
this great personage. I spoke as an intellectual man to an intellectual
man; as one working his difficult way through obscurity and trouble to
usefulness and honour--and requiring only a few crumbs from the rich
man's table to be at ease, and happy at his toil. I begged in abject
humility for those crumbs, and received a lying and cold-blooded excuse
instead of them. I crouched at his gate with a spirit worn by anxiety
and apprehension, and his slaves hunted me away from it. You have passed
through that same gate with me; you were witness of my triumph at the
bedside of his child!"

"You mean his excellency--the operation?"

"I do."

"How little the rich," said I, "know of the misery, the privations,
endured by those who in poverty acquire the knowledge that is to benefit
mankind so largely. How ignorant are they of their trials!"

"If you would know of the ignorance, the folly, and the vice of the
rich," proceeded the baron, always at home upon this his favourite
subject, "you must listen to an endless tale. Ever willing and eager to
detract from the merits of the man of science, and to attribute to him
the assumption of powers beyond human grasp--and ever striving to drag
down the results of his long and patient study to the level of their own
brutish ignorance--they are made the sport, the tools, and playthings of
every charlatan and trickster, as they should be. You shall be