xpand we'll increase it to something fitting. And so far from
it's being a favour, just let me handle your statuary for the American
market, and I'll call it one of the smartest strokes of business in my
life."

It took me a long time, and it had cost us both much grateful and
painful emotion, before I had finally managed to refuse his offer and
compounded for a bottle of particular wine. He dropped the subject at
last suddenly with a "Never mind; that's all done with," nor did he
again refer to the subject, though we passed together the rest of the
afternoon, and I accompanied him, on his departure; to the doors of the
waiting-room at St. Lazare. I felt myself strangely alone; a voice told
me that I had rejected both the counsels of wisdom and the helping
hand of friendship; and as I passed through the great bright city on
my homeward way, I measured it for the first time with the eye of an
adversary.

CHAPTER V. IN WHICH I AM DOWN ON MY LUCK IN PARIS.

In no part of the world is starvation an agreeable business; but I
believe it is admitted there is no worse place to starve in than this
city of Paris. The appearances of life are there so especially gay,
it is so much a magnified beer-garden, the houses are so ornate, the
theatres so numerous, the very pace of the vehicles is so brisk, that a
man in any deep concern of mind or pain of body is constantly driven in
upon himself. In his own eyes, he seems the one serious creature moving
in a world of horrible unreality; voluble people issuing from a
cafe, the queue at theatre doors, Sunday cabfuls of second-rate
pleasure-seekers, the bedizened ladies of the pavement, the show in the
jewellers' windows--all the familiar sights contributing to flout his
own unhappiness, want, and isolation. At the same time, if he be at all
after my pattern, he is perhaps supported by a childish satisfaction:
this is life at last, he may tell himself, this is the real thing;
the bladders on which I was set swimming are now empty, my own weight
depends upon the ocean; by my own exertions I must perish or succeed;
and I am now enduring in the vivid fact, what I so much delighted to
read of in the case of Lonsteau or Lucien, Rodolphe or Schaunard.

Of the steps of my misery, I cannot tell at length. In ordinary times
what were politically called "loans" (although they were never meant to
be repaid) were matters of constant course among the students, and many
a man has partly lived