IX

"I was alone, with no one to help me, no money to buy books or to

pay the expenses of my medical training; I had not a friend; my

irascible, touchy, restless temper was against me. No one

understood that this irritability was the distress and toil of a

man who, at the bottom of the social scale, is struggling to

reach the surface. Still, I had, as I may say to you, before whom

I need wear no draperies, I had that ground-bed of good feeling

and keen sensitiveness which must always be the birthright of any

man who is strong enough to climb to any height whatever, after

having long trampled in the bogs of poverty. I could obtain

nothing from my family, nor from my home, beyond my inadequate

allowance. In short, at that time, I breakfasted off a roll which

the baker in the Rue du Petit-Lion sold me cheap because it was

left from yesterday or the day before, and I crumbled it into

milk; thus my morning meal cost me but two sous. I dined only

every other day in a boarding-house where the meal cost me

sixteen sous. You know as well as I what care I must have taken

of my clothes and shoes. I hardly know whether in later life we

feel grief so deep when a colleague plays us false as we have

known, you and I, on detecting the mocking smile of a gaping seam

in a shoe, or hearing the armhole of a coat split, I drank

nothing but water; I regarded a cafe with distant respect.

Zoppi's seemed to me a promised land where none but the Lucullus

of the pays Latin had a right of entry. 'Shall I ever take a cup

of coffee there with milk in it?' said I to myself, 'or play a

game of dominoes?'

"I threw into my work the fury I felt at my misery. I tried to

master positive knowledge so as to acquire the greatest personal

value, and merit the position I should hold as soon as I could

escape from nothingness. I consumed more oil than bread; the

light I burned during these endless nights cost me more than

food. It was a long duel, obstinate, with no sort of consolation.

I found no sympathy anywhere. To have friends, must we not form

connections with young men, have a few sous so as to be able to

go tippling with them, and meet them where students congregate?

And I had nothing! And no one in Paris can understand that

nothing means NOTHING. When I even thought of revealing my

beggary, I had that nervous contraction of the throat which makes

a sick man believe that a ball rises up from the oesophagus into

the larynx.

"In later life I have met people born to wealth who, never having

wanted for anything, had never even heard this problem in the

rule of three: A young man is to crime as a five-franc piece is

to X.--These gilded idiots say to me, 'Why did you get into debt?

Why did you involve yourself in such onerous obligations?' They

remind me of the princess who, on hearing that the people lacked

bread, said, 'Why do not they buy cakes?' I should like to see

one of these rich men, who complain that I charge too much for an

operation,--yes, I should like to see him alone in Paris without

a sou, without a friend, without credit, and forced to work with

his five fingers to live at all! What would he do? Where would he

go to satisfy his hunger?