Each of us was to pay sixty francs a year. So there we were
housed, my humble friend and I. We dined together. Bourgeat, who earned
about fifty sous a day, had saved a hundred crowns or so; he would soon
be able to gratify his ambition by buying a barrel and a horse. On
learning of my situation--for he extracted my secrets with a quiet
craftiness and good nature, of which the remembrance touches my heart to
this day, he gave up for a time the ambition of his whole life; for
twenty-two years he had been carrying water in the street, and he now
devoted his hundred crowns to my future prospects."
Desplein at these words clutched Bianchon's arm tightly. "He gave me the
money for my examination fees! That man, my friend, understood that I
had a mission, that the needs of my intellect were greater than his. He
looked after me, he called me his boy, he lent me money to buy books, he
would come in softly sometimes to watch me at work, and took a mother's
care in seeing that I had wholesome and abundant food, instead of the
bad and insufficient nourishment I had been condemned to. Bourgeat, a
man of about forty, had a homely, mediaeval type of face, a prominent
forehead, a head that a painter might have chosen as a model for that of
Lycurgus. The poor man's heart was big with affections seeking an
object; he had never been loved but by a poodle that had died some time
since, of which he would talk to me, asking whether I thought the Church
would allow masses to be said for the repose of its soul.
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