My good fellow, refined souls, whose powers move in a
lofty atmosphere, have none of that spirit of intrigue that is fertile
in resource and device; their good genius is chance; they do not invent,
things come to them.
"At night I went home, at the very moment when my fellow lodger also
came in--a water-carrier named Bourgeat, a native of Saint-Flour. We
knew each other as two lodgers do who have rooms off the same landing,
and who hear each other sleeping, coughing, dressing, and so at last
become used to one another. My neighbor informed me that the landlord,
to whom I owed three quarters' rent, had turned me out; I must clear out
next morning. He himself was also turned out on account of his
occupation. I spent the most miserable night of my life. Where was I to
get a messenger who could carry my few chattels and my books? How could
I pay him and the porter? Where was I to go? I repeated these
unanswerable questions again and again, in tears, as madmen repeat their
tunes. I fell asleep; poverty has for its friends heavenly slumbers full
of beautiful dreams.
"Next morning, just as I was swallowing my little bowl of bread soaked
in milk, Bourgeat came in and said to me in his vile Auvergne accent:
"'_Mouchieur l'Etudiant_, I am a poor man, a foundling from the hospital
at Saint-Flour, without either father or mother, and not rich enough to
marry.
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