532 THE MASS OF THE ATHEIST. 



the day before, or even of the one preceding. By contenting my- 

 self with this dipped in milk, my morning repast cost me but two 

 sous. I dined but every other day, and that in a boarding-house, 

 where the dinner cost but eighteen sous. I spent in this manner only 

 eleven sous a day. You know as well as I can tell you what care I 

 must have taken of my clothes, my shoes and stockings. And I know 

 not whether at a later and more prosperous period of our lives we 

 are as much afflicted by the treachery of a brother in the profession 

 as we have been, you and I, on perceiving the grinning aperture at 

 the side of a shoe when the stitches give way, or on hearing the 

 cracking of the seam of your surtout under the arm. I drank no- 

 thing but water, entertained the greate.t possible respect for the 

 cafes, and looked upon Zoppi's as a land of promise where the Lu- 

 culluses of the pays-latin alone had the right of presenting them- 

 selves. ' Shall I ever be able,' said I sometimes to myself, ' lo lake 

 a cup of cafe a la creme there ? to play a party at dominoes there V 

 With all this, I carried into my studies the rage with which misery 

 inspired me. I sought to engross, to monopolize, a vast hoard of cer- 

 tain knowledge, to the end that I might acquire an immense per- 

 sonal value, in order to deserve the station at which I should one day 

 arrive on emerging from my nothingness. I consumed more oil than 

 bread ; the lamp which lighted me during these long, obstinately- 

 employed nights, cost me more than the food which nourished my 

 body. This struggle was long, hard fought, and without comfort or 

 encouragement. I awakened no sympathy in those around me. Must 

 one not, if we would have friends, make acquaintance with young 

 men, be master of a few sous in order to go and tipple with them, 

 and to be seen by them in all the haunts frequented by students ? 

 But I had nothing ; and, when that involved the necessity of disco- 

 vering my difficulties and privations, I experienced that nervous 

 contraction in the throat that so often impresses upon our patients the 

 idea that a ball is rising from the oesophagus in the larynx. Later 

 in life I have sometimes fallen in with these people, born rich, who 

 have never wanted any thing, who know not the problem of this rule 



of three :'' 



" A young man is to crime as a piece of a hundred sous is to X." 

 " These gilded imbeciles will say to you, ' Why then did you run 

 into debt? Why then have you contracted obligations ? Why take 

 upon one's self engagements that one cannot fulfil V They produce 

 upon me the same effect as the question of a celebrated and unfor- 

 tunate princess, who, knowing that the people were dying for want 

 of bread, asked, ' Why they did not buy themselves cakes!' I should 

 be glad to see one of those rich persons who complain that I demand 

 too much when I have performed a difficult and necessary operation 

 alone in Paris, without money or goods, without a friend, without 

 credit, and obliged to work with his ten fingei-s in order to live. 

 What would he do ? Where would he go to appease his Hunger ? 

 Bianchon, if you have sometimes seen me hard and bitter, I was then 

 atlributintr, retaliating my early sufferings upon the insensibility, 

 upon the'selfish egotism of which I have had thousands of proofs in 

 the higher circles, or else I was thinking of the obstacles which ha- 



