TlIK iMAbS OF THE ATHEIST. 531 



And then followed a torrent of sarcasms directed towards various 

 individuals of celebrity in the political world, the best known among 

 which offers us in our days a new edition of the Tartufe of Moliere. 



" I want to know nothing about all that," said Bianchon, " I ask 

 you the reason of what you have just been doing ; for it is you who 

 are the founder of this mass." 



" In good faith, my dear friend," said Desplein, " I am hovering 

 on the brink of the grave. I know not why 1 should hesitate to re- 

 late to you the earlier scenes of my life." 



At this moment Bianchon and the great man found themselves in 

 the rue des Qiuttre Vents, one of the most horrible streets in Paris. 

 Desplein directed his attention to the sixth story of one of those houses 

 which resemble an obelisk, of which the door of doubtful designation 

 opens upon a passage, at the end of which is a tortuous stair-case 

 lighted by those tantalizing apertures so justly called jours de 

 sovfficmse — a greenish decayed mansion, the ground floor of which 

 was occupied by a dealer in furniture, and which appeared to lodge 

 on each of its respective stages a different species of misery. Rais- 

 ing his arm, with an action full of energy, Desplein said to Bianchon, 

 " I lived up there two years.'' 



"WellY" 



The mass that I have just come from hearing is connected with 

 some events which took place when I inhabited the garret on the 

 sixth floor, at the window of which you see a cord bearing some li- 

 nen, which floats above a flower-pot. My life of a man began so 

 roughly, my dear Bianchon, that I may dispute the palm with who- 

 ever it may be on the article of Parisian suffering. I have endured 

 them all. Hunger and thirst; want of money; want of clothes, of 

 shoes and stockings, of linen ; all that misery presents the most diffi- 

 cult to support. I have sought to infuse warmth into my benumbed 

 fingers by my own proper heat in breathing upon them, in that very 

 chamber which I should now wish to revisit in your company. Ihave 

 laboured an entire winter, seeing as I did so the e.\halations rising 

 from my head, and distinguishing the air of my respiration as you re- 

 mark that of horses in a frosty morning. I know not from whence 

 we derive the point of support by which we are enabled to contend 

 against such a life. I was alone in the world, without assistance, 

 without a sou to purchase books or to defray the expenses of my me- 

 dical education, witliout a friend ; for my irritable, distrusting, un- 

 easy character was against me. Nobody thought of attributing my 

 irritation to the difficulties and labours of a man who, from the ob- 

 scure abyss in which he is buried, struggles and agitates in order to 

 arrive at the surface. But I had, I may say it to you, before whom 

 I have no need to put on any artificial ornament, that fund of good 

 feelings and lively sensibility which will always be the portion of tiiose 

 who have the strength and energy necessary to climb to a summit, 

 whatever it may be, after long treading the thorny path of misery. 

 I could draw nothing from my family, nor from my birth-place, be- 

 yond the insufficient pittance that was allowed me. In fine, at this 

 jjeriod, I ate for my breakfast a roll which a baker in the riif: dc Pc- 

 lit Lion let me have cheaper because it w^s always of the baking of 



