in order that no more quarrels should disturb the harmony of our household, each of us taking care every day to examine the accounts. This is the little book I have found. How simple, how touching, how laconic, how full of souvenirs it is!
"We were wonderfully honest on the first of every month. I read at the date of November 1st, 1843, 'Paid Madame Bastien forty cents for tobacco due.' We paid, too, the grocer, the restaurant, (I declare there is 'restaurant' on the book!) the coal-dealer, etc. The first day of this month was a merry day, I see: 'Spent at the café seven cents'; a piece of extravagance for which I am sure you must have scolded me that evening. The same day you bought (the sight still makes me tremble!) thirteen cents' worth of pipes. The second of November we bought twenty-two cents' worth of ribbon: this enormous quantity of ribbon was purchased to give the last touches to our famous sofa. Our sofa's history would fill volumes. It did us yeoman's service. My pallet on the floor, formed of one single mattress and sheets without counterpane, made a poor show in our 'drawing-room,' especially as a restaurant-keeper lived in our house, and you pretended, that, if we made him bring our meals up to our 'drawing-room,' he would be so dazzled by our splendor he could not refuse us credit. I demurred, that the odd appearance of my pallet had nothing capable of fascinating a tradesman's eye; whereupon we agreed that we would spread over it a piece of violet silk which came, Heaven knows where from; but, unfortunately, the silk was not large enough by one-third. After long reflection we thought the library might be turned to some account: the quarto volumes of Shakspeare, thrown with cunning negligence on the pallet, hid the narrowness of the silk, and concealed the sheets from every eye. We managed in this way to contrive a sofa. I may add, that the keeper of the restaurant dedicated to the 'Guardian Angel,' who had no customers except hack-drivers and bricklayers, was caught by our innocent intrigues. On this same second of November we paid an immense sum of money to the laundress,—one whole dollar. I crossed the Pont des Arts, proud as a member of the Institute, and entered with a stiff upper-lip the Café Momus. You remember this beneficent establishment, which we discovered, gave half a cup of coffee for five cents, until bread rose, when the price went up to six cents, a measure which so discontented many of the frequenters that they carried their custom elsewhere. I passed the evening at Laurent's room. I must have been seized with vertigo,—for I actually lost ten cents at écarté, ten cents which we had appropriated to the purchase of roasted chestnuts. Poor Laurent, who was such a democrat, who used to go 'at the head of the schools' to see Béranger, is dead and gone now! His poems were too revolutionary for this world.
"You resolved on the third of November that we would cook our own victuals as long as the fourteen dollars lasted; so you bought a soup-pot which cost fifteen cents, some thyme and some laurel: being a poet, you had such a marked weakness for laurel, you used to poison all the soup with it. We laid in a supply of potatoes, and constantly bought tobacco, coffee, and sugar. There was gnashing of teeth and curses when the expenses of the fourth of November were written. Why did you let me go out with my pockets so full of money? And you went to Dagneaux's and spent five cents. What in the name of Heaven could you have gotten at Dagneaux's for five cents?3 Good me! how expensive are the least pleasures! Upon pretext of going with a free-ticket to see a drama by an inhabitant of Belleville, I bought two omnibus-tickets, one to go and the other to return. Two omnibus-tickets! I was severely punished for this prodigality. Seventy-four cents ran away from me, making their escape through a hole in my pocket. How could I dare to return home and confront your wrath? Two omnibus-tickets alone would have brought a severe admonition on my head; but seventy-four cents with them—! If I had not begun to disarm you by telling you the Belleville drama, I should have been a doomed man. Nevertheless, the next day, without thinking of these terrible losses, we lent G– money; he really seemed to look upon us as Messrs. Murger and Co., his bankers. I wonder by what insidious means this G–contrived to captivate our confidence, and the only solution I can discover is the inexperience of giddy youth; for two days afterwards G– was audacious enough to reappear and to ask for another loan. Nothing new appears on the pages of the book, except fifteen cents for wine: this must have been one of your ideas: I do not mean to say that you were ever a wine-bibber, but we were so accustomed to water, we drank so much water without getting tired of it, that this item, 'wine,' seems very extraordinary to me. We added up every page until the eighth of November, when the sum total reached eight dollars and twelve cents; here the additions ceased. We doubtless were averse to trembling at the sight of the total. The tenth of November, you purchased a thimble: some men have skill enough to mend their clothes at their leisure moments. A few days ago I paid a visit to a charming literary man, who writes articles full of life and wit for the newspapers. I opened the door so suddenly, he blushed as he threw a pair of pantaloons into the corner. He had a thimble on his finger. Ah! wretched cits, who refuse to give your daughters in marriage to literary men, you would be full of admiration for them, could you see them mending their clothes! Smoking-tobacco absorbed more than one-third of our money; we received too many friends, and then there was a celebrated artisan-poet who used to be brought to our rooms, and who used to bawl so many stanzas I would go to bed.
"Monsieur Credit made his reappearance on the fourteenth of November. He went to the grocer, to the tobacco-shop, to the fuel-dealer, and was received tolerably well; he was especially successful with the grocer's daughter when he appeared in your likeness. Did Monsieur Credit die on the seventeenth of November? I ask, because I see on the 'credit' side of our account-book, 'Frock-coat, sixty cents.' These sixty cents came from the pawnbroker's. How his clerks humiliated us! I could make a long and terrible history of our dealings with the pawnbroker; I shall make a short and simple story of it. When money failed us, you pointed out to me an old cashmere shawl which we used as a table-cover. I told you, 'They will give us nothing on that.' You replied, 'Oh, yes, they will, if we add pantaloons and waistcoats to it.' I added pantaloons and waistcoats to it, and you took the bundle and started for the den in Place de la Croix Rouge. You soon came back with the huge package, and you were sad enough as you said, 'They are disagreeable yonder; try in the Rue de Condé; the clerks, who are accustomed to deal with students, are not so hard-hearted as they are in the Place de la Croix Rouge.' I went to the Rue de Condé. The two pair of pantaloons, the famous shawl, and the waistcoats were closely examined; even their pockets were searched. 'We cannot lend anything on that,' said the pawnbroker's clerk, disdainfully pushing the things away from him. You had the excellent habit of never despairing. You said, 'We must wait until this evening; at night all clothes are new; and to take every precaution, I shall go to the pawnbroker's shop in the Rue du Fouare, where all the poor go; as they are accustomed there to see nothing pledged but rags and tatters, our clothes will glitter like barbaric pearl and gold.' Alas! the pawnbroker in the Rue du Fouare was as cruel as his brethren. So the next morning in sheer despair I went to pledge my only frock-coat, and I did this to lend half the sum to that incessant borrower, G–. Lastly, on the nineteenth of November, we sold some books. Fortune smiled on us; we had a chicken-soup with a superabundance of laurel. Do you remember an excellent shopkeeper of the Rue du Faubourg Saint Jacques, near the city-gate, who, we were told, not only sold thread, but kept a circulating library? What a circulating library it was! Plays, three odd volumes of Anne Radcliffe's novels,—and if the old lady had never made our acquaintance, the inhabitants of the Faubourg Saint Jacques would never have known of the existence of 'Letters upon Mythology' and 'De Profundis,' two books I was heartless enough to sell, notwithstanding all their titles to my respect. The authors were born in the same neighborhood which gave me birth: one is Desmoustiers, the other Alfred Mousse. Maybe Arsène Houssaye would not be pleased, were I to remind him of one of the crimes of his youth, where one sees for a frontispiece skeletons—'twas the heyday of the Romantic School—playing tenpins with skulls for balls! The sale of 'De Profundis' enabled us to visit Café Tabourey that evening. You sold soon afterwards eighty cents' worth of books. Allow me to record that they came from your library; my library remained constantly upon the shelves; notwithstanding all your appeals, I never sold any books, except the lamentable history of Alfred Mousse. Monsieur Credit contrived to go to the tradesmen's with imperturbable coolness; he went everywhere until the first of December, when he paid every cent of debt. I have but one regret, and this is, that the little account-book suddenly ceases after a month; it contains only the month of November. This is not enough! Had I continued it, Its pages would have been so many mementos to recall my past life to
Dagneaux's is the most expensive restaurant of the Latin Quarter.
