m, for
the sake of "effect" on the title-pages of books and on the backs of
magazines, to change Henri to Henry, and give Murger a German
physiognomy by writing it Muerger. As Frenchmen treat their names with as
much freedom as we use towards old gloves, Murger instantly adopted
Monsieur Houssaye's suggestion, and clung as long as he lived to the new
orthography of his name. He began to find it less difficult to procure
each day his daily bread, but still the gaunt wolf, Poverty, continued
to glare on him. "Our existence," he said, "is like a ballad which has
several couplets; sometimes all goes well, at other times all goes
badly, then worse, next worst, and so on; but the burden never changes;
'tis always the same,--Misery! Misery! Misery!" One day he became so
absolutely and hopelessly poor, that he was undecided whether to enlist
as a sailor or take a clerk's place in the Messrs. de Rothschilds'
banking-house. He actually did make application to Madame de Rothschild.
Here is the letter in which he records this application:--

"_15th August, 1844._

"I am delighted to be at last able to write you without being obliged to
describe wretchedness. Ill-fortune seems to begin to tire of pursuing
me, and good-fortune appears about to make advances to me. Madame
Rothschild, to whom I wrote begging her to get her husband to give me a
situation, informed her correspondent of it, and told him to send for
and talk with me. I could not obtain a place, but I was offered ten
dollars rather delicately, and I took it. As soon as I received it, I
went as fast as I could to put myself in condition to be able to go out
in broad daylight."

We scarcely know which is the saddest to see: Henry Murger accepting ten
dollars from Madame de Rothschild's generous privy purse,--for it is
alms, soften it as you may,--or to observe the happiness this paltry sum
gives him. How deeply he must have been steeped in poverty!

But now the very worst was over. In 1848 he sent a contribution to "Le
Corsaire," a petty newspaper of odds and ends, of literature and of
gossip. The contribution was published. He became attached to the paper.
In 1849 he began the publication in "Le Corsaire" of the story which was
to make him famous, "La Vie de Boheme," which was, like all his works,
something in the nature of an autobiographical sketch. Its wit, its
sprightly style, its odd images, its odd scenes, its strange mixture of
gayety and sadness, attracted attent