To
have friends, must we not form connections with young men, have a few
sous so as to be able to go tippling with them, and meet them where
students congregate? And I had nothing! And no one in Paris can
understand that nothing means _nothing_. When I even thought of revealing
my beggary, I had that nervous contraction of the throat which makes a
sick man believe that a ball rises up from the oesophagus into the
larynx.
"In later life I have met people born to wealth who, never having wanted
for anything, had never even heard this problem in the rule of three: A
young man is to crime as a five-franc piece is to X.--These gilded
idiots say to me, 'Why did you get into debt? Why did you involve
yourself in such onerous obligations?' They remind me of the princess
who, on hearing that the people lacked bread, said, 'Why do not they buy
cakes?' I should like to see one of these rich men, who complain that I
charge too much for an operation,--yes, I should like to see him alone
in Paris without a sou, without a friend, without credit, and forced to
work with his five fingers to live at all! What would he do? Where would
he go to satisfy his hunger?
"Bianchon, if you have sometimes seen me hard and bitter, it was because
I was adding my early sufferings on to the insensibility, the
selfishness of which I have seen thousands of instances in the highest
circles; or, perhaps, I was thinking of the obstacles which hatred,
envy, jealousy, and calumny raised up between me and success.
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