fever. I
have shaken the box, and see that it is not empty. But I stood in
need of this evidence, for in my own eyes I had fallen as low as
the Public Funds in 1848. Return here before the money Michel Levy
gave you is exhausted, for I cannot get any more for you. I am
working half the day and half the night. I feel that the great
flood-tide of 'copy' is at hand. My laundress and my pantaloons
have both deserted me. I am obliged to use grape-vine leaves for
my pocket-handkerchief.... There is nothing new here. The dogs are
in good health, but they do not look fat; I am afraid they have
fasted sometimes. Our chimney is again inhabited by a family of
swallows; they say that is a good sign: maybe it means that we
shall have fire all the winter long."

To this letter was added a postscript which one of the dogs was supposed
to have written:--

"My dear lady,--They say here we are going to see mighty hard
times. My master talks of suppressing my breakfast, and he wants
to hire me to a shepherd in order that I may earn some money for a
living. But as I have the reputation of loving mutton-chops,
nobody will hire me to keep sheep. If you see anywhere in Paris a
pretty diamond collar which does not cost more than
five-and-twenty cents, bring it to

"DOG MIRZA.

"_14th March, 1855_."

Hope dawned upon him in 1856. He was promised a pension of three hundred
dollars from the Government out of the literary fund of the Minister of
Public Instruction's budget. It would have been, from its regularity of
payment, a fortune to him. It would have saved him from the anxiety of
quarter-day when rent fell due. But the pension never came. The
Government gave him the decoration of the Legion of Honor, which
certainly gratified him. But money for bread would have been of more
service. When Rachel lay upon that invalid's chair which she was never
to quit except for her coffin, she gazed one morning upon the breakfast
of delicacies spread before her to tempt the return of absent appetite.
After some moments of silence, she took up a piece of bread as white as
the driven snow, and, sighing, said in that whisper which was all that
remained to her of voice,--"Ay, me! Had the world given me a little more
of _this_, and earlier in my life, I had not been here at
three-and-thirty." Those early years of want which sapped Rachel's life
undermined Murger's constit