XI

"At night I went home, at the very moment when my fellow lodger

also came in--a water-carrier named Bourgeat, a native of Saint-

Flour. We knew each other as two lodgers do who have rooms off

the same landing, and who hear each other sleeping, coughing,

dressing, and so at last become used to one another. My neighbor

informed me that the landlord, to whom I owed three quarters'

rent, had turned me out; I must clear out next morning. He

himself was also turned out on account of his occupation. I spent

the most miserable night of my life. Where was I to get a

messenger who could carry my few chattels and my books? How could

I pay him and the porter? Where was I to go? I repeated these

unanswerable questions again and again, in tears, as madmen

repeat their tunes. I fell asleep; poverty has for its friends

heavenly slumbers full of beautiful dreams.

"Next morning, just as I was swallowing my little bowl of bread

soaked in milk, Bourgeat came in and said to me in his vile

Auvergne accent:

" 'Mouchieur l'Etudiant, I am a poor man, a foundling from the

hospital at Saint-Flour, without either father or mother, and not

rich enough to marry. You are not fertile in relations either,

nor well supplied with the ready? Listen, I have a hand-cart

downstairs which I have hired for two sous an hour; it will hold

all our goods; if you like, we will try to find lodgings

together, since we are both turned out of this. It is not the

earthly paradise, when all is said and done.'

" 'I know that, my good Bourgeat,' said I. 'But I am in a great

fix. I have a trunk downstairs with a hundred francs' worth of

linen in it, out of which I could pay the landlord and all I owe

to the porter, and I have not a hundred sous.'

" 'Pooh! I have a few dibs,' replied Bourgeat joyfully, and he

pulled out a greasy old leather purse. 'Keep your linen.'

"Bourgeat paid up my arrears and his own, and settled with the

porter. Then he put our furniture and my box of linen in his

cart, and pulled it along the street, stopping in front of every

house where there was a notice board. I went up to see whether

the rooms to let would suit us. At midday we were still wandering

about the neighborhood without having found anything. The price

was the great difficulty. Bourgeat proposed that we should eat at

a wine shop, leaving the cart at the door. Towards evening I

discovered, in the Cour de Rohan, Passage du Commerce, at the

very top of a house next the roof, two rooms with a staircase

between them. Each of us was to pay sixty francs a year. So there

we were housed, my humble friend and I. We dined together.

Bourgeat, who earned about fifty sous a day, had saved a hundred

crowns or so; he would soon be able to gratify his ambition by

buying a barrel and a horse. On learning of my situation--for he

extracted my secrets with a quiet craftiness and good nature, of

which the remembrance touches my heart to this day, he gave up

for a time the ambition of his whole life; for twenty-two years

he had been carrying water in the street, and he now devoted his

hundred crowns to my future prospects."