Chapter II: Part 2

"DEAR FRED,--I try to find heart and life to tell you that it is all over with dear old Nolan. I have been with him on this voyage more than I ever was, and I can understand wholly now the way in which you used to speak of the dear old fellow. I could see that he was not strong, but I had no idea the end was so near. The doctor had been watching him very carefully, and yesterday morning came to me and told me that Nolan was not so well, and had not left his state-room,--a thing I never remember before. He had let the doctor come and see him as he lay there,--the first time the doctor had been in the state-room,--and he said he should like to see me. Oh, dear! do you remember the mysteries we boys used to invent about his room, in the old Intrepid days? Well, I went in, and there, to be sure, the poor fellow lay in his berth, smiling pleasantly as he gave me his hand, but looking very frail. I could not help a glance round, which showed me what a little shrine he had made of the box he was lying in. The stars and stripes were triced up above and around a picture of Washington, and he had painted a majestic eagle, with lightnings blazing from his beak and his foot just clasping the whole globe, which his wings overshadowed. The dear old boy saw my glance, and said, with a sad smile, 'Here, you see, I have a country!' And then he pointed to the foot of his bed, where I had not seen before a great map of the United Stales, as he had drawn it from memory, and which he had there to look upon as he lay. Quaint, queer old names were on it, in large letters: 'Indiana Territory,' 'Mississippi Territory,' and 'Louisiana Territory,' as I suppose our fathers learned such things: but the old fellow had patched in Texas, too; he had carried his western boundary all the way to the Pacific, but on that shore he had defined nothing.

"'Oh, Danforth,' he said, 'I know I am dying. I cannot get home. Surely you will tell me something now?--Stop! stop! Do not speak till I say what I am sure you know, that there is not in this ship, that there is not in America,--God bless her!--a more loyal man than I. There cannot be a man who loves the old flag as I do, or prays for it as I do, or hopes for it as I do. There are thirty-four stars in it now, Danforth. I thank God for that, though I do not know what their names are. There has never been one taken away: I thank God for that. I know by that, that there has never been any successful Burr. Oh, Danforth, Danforth,' he sighed out, 'how like a wretched night's dream a boy's idea of personal fame or of separate sovereignty seems, when one looks back on it after such a life as mine! But tell me,--tell me something,--tell me everything, Danforth, before I die!'"

"Ingham, I swear to you that I felt like a monster that I had not told him everything before. Danger or no danger, delicacy or no delicacy, who was I, that I should have been acting the tyrant all this time over this dear, sainted old man, who had years ago expiated, in his whole manhood's life, the madness of a boy's treason? 'Mr. Nolan,' said I, 'I will tell you everything you ask about. Only, where shall I begin?'

"Oh, the blessed smile that crept over his white face! and he pressed my hand and said, 'God bless you!' 'Tell me their names,' he said, and he pointed to the stars on the flag. 'The last I know is Ohio. My father lived in Kentucky. But I have guessed Michigan and Indiana and Mississippi,--that was where Fort Adams is,--they make twenty. But where are your other fourteen? You have not cut up any of the old ones, I hope?'

"Well, that was not a bad text, and I told him the names, in as good order as I could, and he bade me take down his beautiful map and draw them in as I best could with my pencil. He was wild with delight about Texas, told me how his brother died there; he had marked a gold cross where he supposed his brother's grave was; and he had guessed at Texas. Then he was delighted as he saw California and Oregon;--that, he said, he had suspected partly, because he had never been permitted to land on that shore, though the ships were there so much. 'And the men,' said he, laughing, 'brought off a good deal besides furs.' Then he went back--heavens, how far!--to ask about the Chesapeake, and what was done to Barron for surrendering her to the Leopard, and whether Burr ever tried again,--and he ground his teeth with the only passion he showed. But in a moment that was over, and he said, 'God forgive me, for I am sure I forgive him.' Then he asked about the old war,--told me the true story of his serving the gun the day we took the Java,--asked about dear old David Porter, as he called him. Then he settled down more quietly, and very happily, to hear me tell in an hour the history of fifty years.

"How I wished it had been somebody who knew something! But I did as well as I could. I told him of the English war. I told him about Fulton and the steamboat beginning. I told him about old Scott, and Jackson; told him all I could think about the Mississippi, and New Orleans, and Texas, and his own old Kentucky. And do you think he asked who was in command of the "Legion of the West." I told him it was a very gallant officer, named Grant, and that, by our last news, he was about to establish his head-quarters at Vicksburg. Then, 'Where was Vicksburg?' I worked that out on the map; it was about a hundred miles, more or less, above his old Fort Adams; and I thought Fort Adams must be a ruin now. 'It must be at old Vicks's plantation,' said he; 'well, that is a change!'

"I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing to condense the history of half a century into that talk with a sick man. And I do not now know what I told him,--of emigration, and the means of it,--of steamboats and railroads and telegraphs,--of inventions and books and literature,--of the colleges and West Point and the Naval School,--but with the queerest interruptions that ever you heard. You see it was Robinson Crusoe asking all the accumulated questions of fifty-six years:

"I remember he asked, all of a sudden, who was President now; and when I told him, he asked if Old Abe was General Benjamin Lincoln's son. He said he met old General Lincoln, when he was quite a boy himself, at some Indian treaty. I said no, that Old Abe was a Kentuckian like himself, but I could not tell him of what family; he had worked up from the ranks. 'Good for him!' cried Nolan; 'I am glad of that. As I have brooded and wondered, I have thought our danger was in keeping up those regular successions in the first families.' Then I got talking about my visit to Washington. I told him of meeting the Oregon Congressman, Harding; I told him about the Smithsonian and the Exploring Expedition; I told him about the Capitol,--and the statues for the pediment,--and Crawford's Liberty,--and Greenough's Washington: Ingham, I told him everything I could think of that would show the grandeur of his country and its prosperity; but I could not make up my mouth to tell him a word about this infernal Rebellion!

"And he drank it in, and enjoyed it as I cannot tell you. He grew more and more silent, yet I never thought he was tired or faint. I gave him a glass of water, but he just wet his lips, and told me not to go away. Then he asked me to bring the Presbyterian 'Book of Public Prayer,' which lay there, and said, with a smile, that it would open at the right, place,--and so it did. There was his double red mark down the page; and I knelt down and read, and he repeated with me,--'For ourselves and our country, O gracious God, we thank Thee, that, notwithstanding our manifold transgressions of Thy holy laws, Thou hast continued to us Thy marvellous kindness,'--and so to the end of that thanksgiving. Then he turned to the end of the same book, and I read the words more familiar to me,--'Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy favor to behold and bless Thy servant, the President of the United States, and all others in authority,'--and the rest of the Episcopal collect. 'Danforth,' said he, 'I have repeated those prayers night and morning, it is now fifty-five years.' And then he said he would go to sleep. He bent me down over him and kissed me; and he said, 'Look in my Bible, Danforth, when I am gone.' And I went away.

"But I had no thought it was the end. I thought he was tired and would sleep. I knew he was happy, and I wanted him to be alone.

"But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently, he found Nolan had breathed his life away with a smile. He had something pressed close to his lips. It was his father's badge of the Order of Cincinnati.

"We looked in his Bible, and there was a slip of paper, at the place where he had marked the text,--

"'They desire a country, even a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.'

"On this slip of paper he had written,--

"'Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will not some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at Orleans, that my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear? Say on it,--

"'_In Memory of_

"'PHILIP NOLAN,

"'_Lieutenant in the Army of the United States._

"'He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands.'"

* * * * *

THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH.

It was the season when through all the land
The merle and mavis build, and building sing
Those lovely lyrics written by His hand
Whom Saxon Cædmon calls the Blithe-Heart King,--
When on the boughs the purple buds expand,
The banners of the vanguard of the Spring,
And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap,
And wave their fluttering signals from the steep.

The robin and the bluebird, piping loud,
Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee;
The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud
Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be;
And hungry crows, assembled in a crowd,
Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly,
Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said,
"Give us, O Lord, this day our daily bread!"

Across the Sound the birds of passage sailed,
Speaking some unknown language strange and sweet
Of tropic isle remote, and passing hailed
The village with the cheers of all their fleet,--
Or, quarrelling together, laughed and railed
Like foreign sailors landed in the street
Of seaport town, and with outlandish noise
Of oaths and gibberish frightening girls and boys.

Thus came the jocund Spring in Killingworth,
In fabulous days, some hundred years ago;
And thrifty farmers, as they tilled the earth,
Heard with alarm the cawing of the crow,
That mingled with the universal mirth,
Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe:
They shook their heads, and doomed with dreadful words
To swift destruction the whole race of birds.

And a town-meeting was convened straightway
To set a price upon the guilty heads
Of these marauders, who, in lieu of pay,
Levied black-mail upon the garden-beds
And cornfields, and beheld without dismay
The awful scarecrow, with his fluttering shreds,--
The skeleton that waited at their feast,
Whereby their sinful pleasure was increased.

Then from his house, a temple painted white,
With fluted columns, and a roof of red,
The Squire came forth,--august and splendid sight!--
Slowly descending, with majestic tread,
Three flights of steps, nor looking left nor right;
Down the long street he walked, as one who said,
"A town that boasts inhabitants like me
Can have no lack of good society!"

The Parson, too, appeared, a man austere,
The instinct of whose nature was to kill;
The wrath of God he preached from year to year,
And read with fervor Edwards on the Will;
His favorite pastime was to slay the deer
In Summer on some Adirondack hill;
E'en now, while walking down the rural lane,
He lopped the way-side lilies with his cane.

From the Academy, whose belfry crowned
The hill of Science with its vane of brass,
Came the Preceptor, gazing idly round,
Now at the clouds, and now at the green grass,
And all absorbed in reveries profound
Of fair Almira in the upper class,
Who was, as in a sonnet he had said,
As pure as water, and as good as bread.

And next the Deacon issued from his door,
In his voluminous neck-cloth, white as snow;
A suit of sable bombazine he wore;
His form was ponderous, and his step was slow;
There never was so wise a man before;
He seemed the incarnate "Well, I told you so!"
And to perpetuate his great renown,
There was a street named after him in town.

These came together in the new town-hall,
With sundry farmers from the region round;
The Squire presided, dignified and tall,
His air impressive and his reasoning sound.
Ill fared it with the birds, both great and small;
Hardly a friend in all that crowd they found,
But enemies enough, who every one
Charged them with all the crimes beneath the sun.

When they had ended, from his place apart,
Rose the Preceptor, to redress the wrong,
And, trembling like a steed before the start,
Looked round bewildered on the expectant throng;
Then thought of fair Almira, and took heart
To speak out what was in him, clear and strong,
Alike regardless of their smile or frown,
And quite determined not to be laughed down.

"Plato, anticipating the Reviewers,
From his Republic banished without pity
The Poets; in this little town of yours,
You put to death, by means of a Committee,
The ballad-singers and the Troubadours,
The street-musicians of the heavenly city,
The birds, who make sweet music for us all
In our dark hours, as David did for Saul.

"The thrush, that carols at the dawn of day
From the green steeples of the piny wood;
The oriole in the elm; the noisy jay,
Jargoning like a foreigner at his food;
The bluebird balanced on some topmost spray,
Flooding with melody the neighborhood;
Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng
That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song.

"You slay them all! and wherefore? For the gain
Of a scant handful more or less of wheat,
Or rye, or barley, or some other grain,
Scratched up at random by industrious feet
Searching for worm or weevil after rain,
Or a few cherries, that are not so sweet
As are the songs these uninvited guests
Sing at their feast with comfortable breasts.

"Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these?
Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught
The dialect they speak, where melodies
Alone are the interpreters of thought?
Whose household words are songs in many keys,
Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught!
Whose habitations in the tree-tops even
Are half-way houses on the road to heaven!

"Think, every morning when the sun peeps through
The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove,
How jubilant the happy birds renew
Their old melodious madrigals of love!
And when you think of this, remember, too,
'Tis always morning somewhere, and above
The awakening continents, from shore to shore,
Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.

"Think of your woods and orchards without birds!
Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams,
As in an idiot's brain remembered words
Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams!
Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds
Make up for the lost music, when your teams
Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more
The feathered gleaners follow to your door?

"What! would you rather see the incessant stir
Of insects in the windrows of the hay,
And hear the locust and the grasshopper
Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play?
Is this more pleasant to you than the whirr
Of meadow-lark, and its sweet roundelay,
Or twitter of little fieldfares, as you take
Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake?

"You call them thieves and pillagers; but know
They are the winged wardens of your farms,
Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe,
And from your harvests keep a hundred harms;
Even the blackest of them all, the crow,
Renders good service as your man-at-arms,
Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail,
And crying havoc on the slug and snail.

"How can I teach your children gentleness,
And mercy to the weak, and reverence
For Life, which, in its weakness or excess,
Is still a gleam of God's omnipotence,
Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no less
The self-same light, although averted hence,
When by your laws, your actions, and your speech,
You contradict the very things I teach?"

With this he closed; and through the audience went
A murmur, like the rustle of dead leaves;
The farmers laughed and nodded, and some bent
Their yellow heads together like their sheaves:
Men have no faith in fine-spun sentiment
Who put their trust in bullocks and in beeves.
The birds were doomed; and, as the record shows,
A bounty offered for the heads of crows.

There was another audience out of reach,
Who had no voice nor vote in making laws,
But in the papers read his little speech,
And crowned his modest temples with applause;
They made him conscious, each one more than each,
He still was victor, vanquished in their cause:
Sweetest of all the applause he won from thee,
O fair Almira at the Academy!

And so the dreadful massacre began;
O'er fields and orchards, and o'er woodland crests,
The ceaseless fusillade of terror ran.
Dead fell the birds, with blood-stains on their breasts,
Or wounded crept away from sight of man,
While the young died of famine in their nests:
A slaughter to be told in groans, not words,
The very St. Bartholomew of Birds!

The Summer came, and all the birds were dead;
The days were like hot coals; the very ground
Was burned to ashes; in the orchards fed
Myriads of caterpillars, and around
The cultivated fields and garden-beds
Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and found
No foe to check their march, till they had made
The land a desert without leaf or shade.

Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town,
Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly
Slaughtered the Innocents. From the trees spun down
The canker-worms upon the passers-by,--
Upon each woman's bonnet, shawl, and gown,
Who shook them off with just a little cry;
They were the terror of each favorite walk,
The endless theme of all the village-talk.

The farmers grew impatient, but a few
Confessed their error, and would not complain;
For, after all, the best thing one can do,
When it is raining, is to let it rain.
Then they repealed the law, although they knew
It would not call the dead to life again;
As school-boys, finding their mistake too late,
Draw a wet sponge across the accusing slate.

That year in Killingworth the Autumn came
Without the light of his majestic look,
The wonder of the falling tongues of flame,
The illumined pages of his Doom's-Day Book.
A few lost leaves blushed crimson with their shame,
And drowned themselves despairing in the brook,
While the wild wind went moaning everywhere,
Lamenting the dead children of the air.

But the next Spring a stranger sight was seen,
A sight that never yet by bard was sung,--
As great a wonder as it would have been,
If some dumb animal had found a tongue:
A wagon, overarched with evergreen,
Upon whose boughs were wicker cages hung,
All full of singing-birds, came down the street,
Filling the air with music wild and sweet.

From all the country round these birds were brought,
By order of the town, with anxious quest,
And, loosened from their wicker prisons, sought
In woods and fields the places they loved best,
Singing loud canticles, which many thought
Were satires to the authorities addressed,
While others, listening in green lanes, averred
Such lovely music never had been heard.

But blither still and louder carolled they
Upon the morrow, for they seemed to know
It was the fair Almira's wedding-day,
And everywhere, around, above, below,
When the Preceptor bore his bride away,
Their songs burst forth in joyous overflow,
And a new heaven bent over a new earth
Amid the sunny farms of Killingworth.

* * * * *

LITERARY LIFE IN PARIS.

THE GARRET.

Would you know something of the way in which men live in Paris? Would you penetrate a little beneath the brilliant, glossy epidermis of the French capital? Would you know other shadows and other sights than those you find in "Galignani's Messenger" under the rubric, "Stranger's Diary"? Listen to us. We hope to be brief. We hope to succeed in tangling your interest. We don't hope to make you merry,--oh, no, no, no! we don't hope that! Life isn't a merry thing anywhere,--least of all in Paris; for, look you, in modern Babylon there are so many calls for money, (which Southey called "a huge evil" everywhere,) there are so many temptations to expense, one has to keep a most cool head and a most silent heart to live in Paris and to avoid debt. Few are able successfully to achieve this charmed life. The Duke of Wellington, who was in debt but twice in his life,--first, when he became of age, and, like all young men, _felt_ his name by indorsing it on negotiable paper, and placing it in a tradesman's book; secondly, when he lived in Paris, master of all France by consent of Europe,--the Duke of Wellington involved himself in debt in Paris to the amount of a million of dollars. Blücher actually ruined himself in the city he conquered. The last heir to the glorious name and princely estates of Von Kaunitz lost everything he possessed, even his dignity, in a few years of life in Paris. Judge of the resistless force and fury of the great maelström!

And I hope, after you have measured some degree of its force and of its fury by these illustrious examples, that you may be softened into something like pity and terror, when I tell you how a poor fellow, who had no name but that he made with his pen, who commanded no money save only that he obtained by transmuting ink and paper into gold, strove against it with various success, and often was vanquished. You will not judge him too harshly, will you? You will not be the first to throw a stone at him, neither will you add your stone, to those that may be thrown at him: hands enough are raised against him! We do not altogether absolve him for many a shortcoming; but we crave permission to keep our censure and our sighs for our study. Permit us to forbear arraigning him at the public bar. He is dead,--and everybody respects the dead, except profligate editors, prostitutes, and political clergymen. Besides, his life was such a hard one,--so full of clouds, with so few gleams of sunshine,--so agitated by storm,--so bereaved of halcyon days,--'twould be most cruel to deny him the grave's dearest privilege, peace and quiet. Amen! Amen! with all my heart to thy benediction and prayer, O priest! as, aspersing his lifeless remains with holy-water, thou sayest, _Requiescat!_ So mote it be! _Requiescat! Requiescat! Requiescat in pace!_

Approach, then, reader, with softest step, and we will, in lowest whispers, pour into your ear the story of the battle of life as 'tis fought in Paris. We will show you the fever and the heartache, the corroding care and the panting labor which oppress life in Paris. Then will you say, No wonder they all die of a shattered heart or consumed brain at Paris! No wonder De Balzac died of heart-disease! No wonder Frederic Souliè's heart burst! No wonder Bruffault went crazy, and Eugene Sue's heart collapsed, and Malitourne lives at the mad-house! It is killing!

We will show you this life, not by didactic description, but by example, by telling you the story of one who lived this life. He was born in the lowest social station, he battled against every disadvantage, the hospital was his sick-chamber, his funeral was at the Government's expense, and everybody eminent in literature and art followed his remains to the grave, over which, after a proper interval of time, a monument was erected by public subscription to his memory. His father was a porter at the door of one of the houses in the Rue des Trois Frères. He added the tailor's trade to his poorly paid occupation. A native of Savoy, he possessed the mountaineer's taciturnity and love of home. War carried him to Paris. The rigors of conscription threw him into the ranks of the army; and when the first Empire fell, the child of Savoy made Paris his home, married a young seamstress, and obtained the lodge of house No. 5 Rue des Trois Frères. This marriage gave to French letters Henry Murger. It had no other issue.

Henry Murger was born March 24th, 1822. His earlier years seemed likely to be his last; he was never well; his mother gave many a tear and many a vigil to the sickly child she thought every week she must lose. To guard his days, she placed him, to gratify a Romish superstition, under the special protection of the Blessed Virgin, and in accordance with custom clad him in the Madonna's livery of blue. His costume of a blue smock, blue pantaloons, and a blue cap procured for him the name of _Bleuet_, or, as we should perhaps say, Blueling, if indeed we may coin for the occasion one of those familiar, affectionate diminutives, so common in the Italian, rarer in the French, and almost unknown in our masculine tongue. An only child, and an invalid, poor Bleuet was of course a spoiled child, his mother's darling and pet. His wishes, his sick-child's caprices were her law, and she gratified them at the cost of many a secret privation. She seemed to know--maternal love hath often the faculty of second-sight--that her poor boy, though only the child of the humblest parentage, was destined to rise one day far above the station in which he was born. She attired him better than children of his class commonly dressed. She polished his manners as much as she could,--and 'twas much, for women, even of the lowest classes, have gentle tastes and delicacy. She could not bear to think that her darling should one day sit cross-legged on the paternal bench, and ply needle and scissors. She breathed her own aspirations into the boy's ears, and filled his mind with them. O mothers, ye do make us what ye please! Your tears and caresses are the rain and the sun that mature the seed which time and the accidents of life sow in our tender minds! She filled him with pride,--which is a cardinal virtue, let theologians say what they will,--and kept him aloof from the little blackguards who toss and tumble over the curb-stones, losing that dignity which is man's chastity, and removing one barrier between them and crime.

He was, even in his earlier years, exquisitely sensitive. La Blache, the famous singer, occupied a suite of rooms in the house of which his father was porter. One day La Blache's daughter, (now Madame Thalberg,) who was confined to her rooms by a fall which had dislocated her ankle, sent for the sprightly lad. He was in love with her, just as boys will adore a pretty face without counting years or differences of position (at that happy age a statesman and a stage-driver seem equal,--if, indeed, the latter does not appear to occupy the more enviable position in life). He dressed himself with all the elegance he could command, and obeyed Mademoiselle La Blache's summons, building all sorts of castles in the air as he arranged his toilet and while he was climbing the staircase. His affected airs were so laughable, she told him in a mock-heroic manner what she wished of him, and probably with something of that paternal talent which had shaken so many opera-houses with applause:--"I have sent for you to teach me the song I hear you sing every day." This downfall from his castles in the air, and her manner, brought blushes to his cheek and flames to his eyes, which amused her all the more; so she went on,--"Oh, don't be afraid! I will pay--two ginger-cakes a lesson." So sensitive was the child's nature, this innocent pleasantry wounded him with such pain, that he fell on the carpet sobbing and with nerves all jangled. How the pangs poverty attracts must have wrung him!--But let us not anticipate the course of events.

As he advanced in life he outgrew his disease, and became a chubby-cheeked boy, health's own picture. He was the favorite of the neighborhood, his mother's pride, and the source of many a heartache to her; for, as he grew towards manhood, his father insisted every day more strenuously that he should learn some trade. His poor mother obstinately opposed this scheme. Many were the boisterous quarrels on this subject the boy witnessed, sobbing between his parents; for his father was a rough, ill-bred mountaineer, who had reached Paris through the barrack and the battle-field, neither of which tends to smooth the asperities of character. The woman was tenacious; for what will not a mother's heart brave? what will it not endure? Those natures which are gentle as water are yet deep and changeless as the ocean. Of course the wife carried her point. Who can resist a mother struggling for her son? The boy was placed as copying-clerk in an attorney's office. All the world over, the law is the highway to literature. The lad, however, was uneducated; he wrote well, and this was enough to enable him to copy the law-papers of the office, but he was ignorant of the first elements of grammar, and his language, although far better than that of the lads of his class in life, was shocking to polite ears. It could not well be otherwise, as his only school was a petty public primary school, and he was but fourteen years old when his father ordered him to begin to earn his daily bread. But he was not only endowed with a literary instinct, he had, too, that obstinate perseverance which would, as one of his friends said of him, "have enabled him to learn to read by looking at the signs in the streets, and to cipher by glancing at the numbers on the houses."

Murger always attributed a great deal of influence upon his life to the accident which had given his father artists for tenants. Not only La Blache, but Garcia and his incomparable daughters, Marie Malibran and Pauline Viardot, and, after they left, Baroilhet, the opera-singer, had rooms in the house. The handsome boy was constantly with them, and this early and long and intimate association with Art gave him elegance and grace and vivacity. The seeds sown during such intercourse may for years lie buried beneath the cares and thoughts of a laborious life, and yet grow and bring forth fruit as soon as a more propitious atmosphere environs them. Comrades in the office where he wrote likewise had influence upon his career. He found among the clerks two brothers, Pierre and Emile Bisson, gentlemen who have now attained reputation by their admirable photographic landscapes, especially of Alpine scenery. They were then as poor and as uneducated as Henry Murger. They lived in a house inhabited by several painters, from whom they caught a love and some knowledge of Art. They communicated the contagion to their new comrade, and the moment office-hours were over all three hastened, as fast as they could go, to the nearest public drawing-school. All three aspired to the fame of Rubens and of Paul Veronese. Murger had no talent for painting. One day, after he had been guilty of some pictures which are said to be--for they are still in existence--enough to make the hair of a connoisseur of painting stand on end, Pierre Bisson said to him, "Throw away the pencil, Murger; you will never make a painter." Murger accepted the decree without appeal. He felt that painting was not _in him_.[B] He took up the pen and wrote poetry. There is nothing equal to the foolhardiness of youth. It grapples with the most difficult subjects, and _knows_ it can master them. As all of Murger's friends were painters, except his father and mother, and they were illiterate, his insane prose seemed as fine poetry as was ever written, because it turned somersets on feet. Nobody noticed whether it was on five or six or fifteen feet. His father, however, had heard what a dangerous disease of the purse poetry was, and forbade his son from trying to catch it,--vowing, that, if he heard again of its continued pursuit, he would immediately make a tailor of him. Of course, the threat did not deter Murger from the chase; but instead of pursuing it openly, he pursued it by stealth. The sportsman became a poacher. Pierre and Émile Bisson quitted the attorney's office and opened a studio: they were painters now. Henry Murger managed to filch an hour every day from the time allotted to the errands of the office about Paris to spend in the studio of his friends, where he would write his poetry and hide his manuscripts. Here he made the acquaintance of artists and literary young men as unfledged as himself, but who possessed the advantages of a regular scholastic education. They taught him the rules of prosody and the exercises proper to overcome the mere mechanical difficulties of versification. This society made Murger more than ever ambitious; a secret instinct told him that the pen was the arm with which he would win fame and fortune. He determined to abandon the law-office.

His father was furious enough at this resolution, and more than one painful scene took place between them. The boy was within an ace of bring kicked out of doors, when his troubles reached the ears of a literary tenant of the house: this was no other than Monsieur de Jouy, a member of the French Academy, and quite famous in his day for "L'Ermite de la Chaussée d'Antin," and a tragedy, "Sylla," which Talma's genius threw such beams upon as made it radiant, and for an imprisonment for political offences, a condiment without which French reputations seem to lack savor. Heaven knows what would have become of the poor boy but for this intervention, as his mother was dead and he was all friendless. Monsieur de Jouy procured him the place of private secretary to Count Tolstoy, a Russian nobleman established by the Czar in Paris as his political correspondent. The salary given was meagre enough, but in this world all things have a relative as well as an intrinsic value, and eight dollars a month seemed to the poor lad, who had never yet earned a cent, a fragment of El Dorado or of Peru. It gave him independence. His contemporaries have described him as gay, free, easy, and happy at this period. He had ceased to be dependent upon anybody; he lived upon his own earnings; he was in the full bloom of health and youth; and the horizon before him, even though clouded, wore all the colors of the rainbow. His father gave him a garret in the house, and continued to allow him a seat at the table, but he made young Murger give him six of the eight dollars earned. The rest of his salary was spent among the boxes of books which line the parapet of the Paris quays,--a sort of literary Morgue or dead-house, where the still-born and deceased children of the press are exhibited, to challenge the pity of passers-by, and so escape the corner grocer and the neighboring trunk-maker. Here Murger purchased all the volumes of new poems he could discover. When his friends jested him upon his wasteful extravagance in buying verse good for nothing but to cheapen the value of the paper on which it was printed, he replied, that a poet should keep himself informed of the progress of Art. He has since confessed that his object in buying this trash was simply to compare his efforts with those which had been deemed worthy to see print. His ambition then was to be pale, consumptive, to drink the dregs of poverty's poisoned chalice, and to toss on a hospital-bed. He found it hard work to gratify these desires. His plethoric person, his rubicund cheeks and high health, gave him much more the appearance of a jovial monk of Bolton Abbey than of a Werther or a Chatterton or a Lara. But as he was determined to look the poet of the Byron school, for a fortnight he followed a regimen "which would have given phthisis to Mount Atlas"; he studied in some medical treatise the symptoms of the consumption, and, after wading through thirty miles of the mud and mire to be found in the environs of Paris, drenched to the skin by an autumnal rain, he went to the hospital and was admitted. He was delighted. He instantly wrote an ode to "Hallowed Misery," dated from the "House of Woe," sent it off to the Atlantic Monthly of Paris, and lay in bed dreaming he should find himself famous next morning, and receive the visits of all Paris, from Monsieur Guizot, then Prime-Minister, to the most callous poetaster of the Latin Quarter, and be besieged by every publisher, armed with bags full of money. He woke the next morning to find himself in perfect health, and to hear the physician order him to clear out of the hospital. He had no news from the magazine nor from Monsieur Guizot.

'Tis ill playing with edge-tools! The hospital is not to be coquetted with. There is no such thing as romping with misery. One might as well amuse himself toying with the rattlesnake or playing with fluoric acid. Wait a moment, and the hospital will reappear in the story of his life, sombre, pitiless, fatal, as it is in reality. A little patience, and misery will come, in its gaunt, wolf-like shape, to harry and to harass. Play not with fire!

Distress soon came. The young poet fell into bad company. He came home late one night. His father scolded: 'tis a porter's infirmity to fret at late-comers. Another night he came home later. The scolding became a philippic. Again he did not come home at all. His father ordered him never more to darken his doors. Murger took him at his word, and went to share a friend's bed in another garret. The friend was little better off in worldly goods; he lived in a chamber for which he paid twenty dollars a year, and which was furnished "with one of those lots of furniture which are the terror of landlords, especially when quarter-day comes." Murger now began to know what it was to be poor, to go to bed without having tasted a morsel of food the whole day, to be dressed ludicrously shabby. He had never before known these horrors of poverty; for under his father's roof the meals, though humble, were always regularly served, and quarter-day never came. As eight dollars,--less by a great deal than an ordinary servant earns by sweeping rooms and washing dishes, besides being fed and lodged,--which Count Tolstoy gave his secretary, was not enough to enable Murger to live, he tried to add something to his income by his pen. He wrote petty tales for children's magazines, and exerted himself to gain admission into other and more profitable periodicals, but for a long time without success. Many and many a sheet must be blotted before the apprentice-writer can merit even the lowest honors of print: can it be called an honor to see printed lines forgotten before the book is closed? Yet even this dubious honor cannot be won until after days and nights have been given to literary composition.

Murger was for some time uncertain what course to adopt. His father sent him word that the best thing he could do would be to get the place of body-servant to some gentleman or of waiter in some _café_! He himself half determined, in his hours of depression, when despair was his only hope, to ship as a sailor on board some man-of-war. He would at other times return to his first love, and vow he would be a painter; then music would solicit him; medicine next, and then surgery would tangle his eyes. These excursions, which commonly lasted three months each, were not fruitless; they increased his stock of information, and supplied him with some of his most striking images. He became joyous about this period, and his hilarity _broke out_ all at once. One night Count Tolstoy had ordered Murger to color several thousand strategic maps, and, after he had postponed the labor repeatedly, he asked several of his friends to aid him. They sat up all night. He suddenly became very gay, and told story after story in a most vivid and humorous manner. His friends roared with laughter, and one of them begged him to abandon poetry and become a prose-writer, predicting for him a most brilliant career. But poetry has its peculiar fascinations, and is not relinquished without painful throes. Murger refused to cease versifying.

He had pernicious habits of labor. He never rose until three o'clock in the afternoon, and never began to write until after the lamp was lighted. He wrote until daybreak. If sleep came, if inspiration lagged, he would resort to coffee, and drink it in enormous quantities. One may turn night into day without great danger, upon condition of leading a temperate and regular life; for Nature has wonderful power of adapting herself to all circumstances, upon condition that irregularity itself he regular in its irregularity. He fell into this habit from poverty. He was too poor to buy fuel and comfortable clothes, so he lay in bed to keep warm; he worked in bed,--reading, writing, correcting, buried under the comfortable bedclothes. He would sometimes drink "as many as six ounces of coffee." "I am literally killing myself," he said. "You must care me of drinking coffee; I reckon upon you." His room-mate suggested to him that they should close the windows, draw the curtains, and light the lamp in the daytime, to deceive habit by counterfeiting night. They made the attempt in vain. The roar of a great city penetrates through wall and curtain. They could not work. Inspiration ceased to flow. Murger returned to his protracted vigils, and to the stimulus of coffee, and never more attempted to break away from them. This sort of life, his frequent privations, his innumerable disappointments, drove him in good earnest to the hospital. He announces it in this way to a friend:--

"_Hospital Saint Louis, 23 May, 1842_.

"MY DEAR FRIEND,--Here I am again at the hospital. Two days after
I sent you my last letter I woke up feeling as if my whole body
were on fire. I felt as if I were enveloped in flames. I was
literally burning. I lighted my candle, and was alarmed by the
spectacle my poor self presented. I was red from my feet to my
head,--as red as a boiled lobster, neither more nor less. So I
went to the hospital this morning, as early as I could go, and
here I am,--Henry IV.'s ward, bed No. 10. The doctors were
astonished at my case; they say it is _purpura_. I should say it
was! The purple of the Roman emperors was not, I am very sure, as
purple as my envelope.... My disease is now in a stage of
reaction, and the doctors do not know what to do, I cannot walk
thirty paces without stumbling. I have thousands of trumpets
blowing flourishes in my ears. I have been bled, re-bled,
mustard-plastered, all in vain. I have swallowed down my poor
throat more arsenic than any three melodramatists of the
Boulevards. I do not know how all this is going to end. The
physician tells me that he will cure me, but that it will take
time. To-day they are going to put all sorts of things on my body,
and among them leeches to remove my giddiness.... I am greatly
fatigued by my life here, and I pass some; very gloomy days,--and
they are the gloomier, because there is not a single day but I see
in the ward next to mine men die thick as flies. A hospital may be
very poetical, but it is, too, a sad, sad place."

Many and many a time afterwards did he return to the hospital, all sad as it was. His garret was sadder in _purpura's_ hour. Want had taken up its abode with him. He wanted bread often. His clothes went and came with painful regularity from his back to the pawnbroker's. His father refused to do anything for him. "He saw me without bread to put in my mouth, and offered me not a crumb, although he had money belonging to me in his hands. He saw me in boots full of holes, and gave me to understand that I was not to come to see him in such plight." Such was the poor fellow's distress, that he was almost glad when the _purpura_, with its intolerable pains, returned, that he might crawl to the hospital, where he could say, that, "bad as the hospital-fare is, it is at least certain, and is, after all, ten times better than that I am able to earn. I can eat as many as two or three plates of soup, but then I am obliged to change my costume to do so, for it is only by cheating that one can get it." But all the time he was in the hospital he was tormented by the fear that he would lose during his absence his wretched place as Count Tolstoy's secretary, and which, wretched as it was, nevertheless was something,--was as a plank in the great ocean to one who, it gone, saw nothing but water around him, and he no swimmer. He did lose the situation, because one day he stayed at home to finish a poem, instead of appearing at his desk. The misfortune came at the worst possible time. It came when he owed two quarters' rent, fifteen dollars, to his landlord, and ten dollars to other people. "I am half dead of hunger. I am at the end of the rope. I must get a place somewhere, or blow my brains out." The mental anguish and physical privation brought back the _purpura_. He went to the hospital,--for the fifth time in eleven months and seven days,--all his furniture was sold for rent, and he knew not where he was to go when he quitted the hospital. Yet he did not give up in despair. "Notwithstanding all this, I declare to you, my dear friend," he wrote, "that, when I feel somewhat satisfied with what I have written, I am ready to clap my hands at life.... Everything is against me, and yet I shall none the less remain in the arena. The wild beasts may devour me: so be it!"

After leaving the hospital, he formed the acquaintance of Monsieur Jules Fleury, or, as he is better known to the world of letters, Monsieur Champfleury,--for, with that license the French take with their names, so this rising novelist styles himself. This acquaintance was of great advantage to Henry Murger. Monsieur Champfleury was a young man of energy and will, who took a practical view of life, and believed that a pen could in good hands earn bread as well as a yardstick, and command, what the latter cannot hope, fame. He believed that independence was the first duty of a literary man, and that true dignity consists in diligent labor rather than in indolent railing at fate and the scoffings of "uncomprehended" genius. Monsieur Champfleury was no poet. He detested poetry, and his accurate perception of the world showed him that poetry is a good deal like paper money, which depends for its current value rather upon the credit possessed by the issuer than upon its own intrinsic value. He pressed Murger to abandon poetry and take to prose. He was successful, and Murger labored to acquire bread and reputation by his prose-compositions. He practised his hand in writing vaudevilles, dramas, tales, and novels, and abandoned poetry until better days, when his life should have a little more silk and a little more gold woven into its woof. But the hours of literary apprenticeship even of prose-writers are long and arduous, especially to those whose only patrimony is their shadow in the sun. Monsieur Champfleury has given in one of his works an interesting picture of their life in common. We translate the painful narration:--

"T'other evening I was sitting in my chimney-corner looking over a
mountain of papers, notes, unfinished articles, and fine novels
begun, but which will never have an end. I discovered amid my
landlords' receipts for house-rent (all of which I keep with great
care, just to prove to myself that they are really and truly paid)
a little copy-book, which was narrow and long, like some mediæval
piece of sculpture. I opened this little blue-backed copy-book; it
bore the title, ACCOUNT-BOOK. How many memories were contained in
this little copy-book! What a happy life is literary life, seen
after a lapse of five or six years! I could not sleep for thinking
of that little copy-book, so I rose and sat down at my table to
discharge on these sheets all the delightful blue-backed copy-book
memories which haunted my head. Were any stranger to pick up this
little copy-book in the street, he would think it belonged to some
poor, honest family. I dare say you have forgotten the little
copy-book, although three-fourths of its manuscript is in your
hand-writing. I am going to recall its origin to you.

"Nine years ago we lived together, and we possessed between us
fourteen dollars a month. Full of confidence in the future, we
rented two rooms in the Rue de Vaugirard for sixty dollars a year.
Youth reckons not. You spoke to the porter's wife of such a
sumptuous set of furniture that she let the rooms to you on your
honest face without asking references. Poor woman, what thrills of
horror ran through her when she saw our furniture set down before
her door! You had six plates, three of which were of porcelain, a
Shakspeare, the works of Victor Hugo, a chest of drawers in its
dotage, and a Phrygian cap. By some extraordinary chance, I had
two mattresses, a hundred and fifty volumes, an arm-chair, two
plain chairs, a table, and a skull. The idea of making a grand
sofa belongs to you, I confess; but it was a deplorable idea. We
sawed off the four feet of a cot-bedstead and made it rest on the
floor; the consequence of which was, that the cot-bedstead proved
to be utterly worthless. The porter's wife took pity upon us, and
lent us a second cot-bedstead, which 'furnished' your chamber,
which was likewise adorned with several dusty souvenirs you hung
on the wall, such as a woman's glove, a velvet mask, and various
other objects which love had hallowed.

"The first week passed away in the most delightful manner. We
stayed at home, we worked hard, we smoked a great deal. I have
found among this mountain of papers a blank sheet on which is
written,--

Beatrix,
A Drama in Five Acts,
By Henry Murger,
Played at the ---- Theatre on the ---- day of 18--.

This sheet was torn out of an enormous blank copy-book; for you
were guilty of the execrable habit of using all our paper to write
nothing else but titles of dramas; you wrote 'Played' as seriously
as could be, just to see what effect the title-page would produce.
Our paper disappeared too fast in this way. Luckily, when all of
it had disappeared, you discovered, Heaven knows where or how,
some old atlas of geography whose alternate leaves were blank,--a
discovery which enabled us to do without the stationer.