VIII

"I am like a great many devout people, men who on the surface are

deeply religious, but quite as much atheists as you or I can be."

And he poured out a torrent of epigrams on certain political

personages, of whom the best known gives us, in this century, a

new edition of Moliere's Tartufe.

"All that has nothing to do with my question," retorted Bianchon.

"I want to know the reason for what you have just been doing, and

why you founded this mass."

"Faith! my dear boy," said Desplein, "I am on the verge of the

tomb; I may safely tell you about the beginning of my life."

At this moment Bianchon and the great man were in the Rue des

Quatre-Vents, one of the worst streets in Paris. Desplein pointed

to the sixth floor of one of the houses looking like obelisks, of

which the narrow door opens into a passage with a winding

staircase at the end, with windows appropriately termed "borrowed

lights"--or, in French, jours de souffrance. It was a greenish

structure; the ground floor occupied by a furniture-dealer, while

each floor seemed to shelter a different and independent form of

misery. Throwing up his arm with a vehement gesture, Desplein

exclaimed:

"I lived up there for two years."

"I know; Arthez lived there; I went up there almost every day

during my first youth; we used to call it then the pickle-jar of

great men! What then?"

"The mass I have just attended is connected with some events

which took place at the time when I lived in the garret where you

say Arthez lived; the one with the window where the clothes line

is hanging with linen over a pot of flowers. My early life was so

hard, my dear Bianchon, that I may dispute the palm of Paris

suffering with any man living. I have endured everything: hunger

and thirst, want of money, want of clothes, of shoes, of linen,

every cruelty that penury can inflict. I have blown on my frozen

fingers in that PICKLE-JAR OF GREAT MEN, which I should like to

see again, now, with you. I worked through a whole winter, seeing

my head steam, and perceiving the atmosphere of my own moisture

as we see that of horses on a frosty day. I do not know where a

man finds the fulcrum that enables him to hold out against such a

life.