near the Arsenal, still bearing the same name.
A small monthly allowance was made him, just enough to keep him from
starving; and an old woman, Mother Comin--the Iris-messenger, he
facetiously called her--who had been in the family's service and was
staying on in the city, undertook to pay him occasional visits and to
report should he be in difficulties.

The novelty of his semi-independence caused him at first to look with
cheerful eye on his narrow surroundings. To his sister he wrote in
April 1819:--

"Here are some details about my way of living. I have taken a servant.

"A servant! What can you be thinking of!

"Yes; a servant. His name is as funny as that of Dr. Nacquart's
domestic. The Doctor's is Tranquil; mine is Myself. He is a bad
acquisition! . . . Myself is idle, clumsy, and improvident. When his
master is hungry and thirsty, he has sometimes neither bread nor water
to give him; he does not know how to protect himself against the wind,
which blows through the door and window like Tulou through his flute,
but less agreeably. As soon as I am awake, I ring for Myself, and he
makes my bed. He sets to sweeping, and is not very deft in the
exercise.

"Myself!

"Yes, Sir.

"Just look at the cobweb where that big fly is buzzing loud enough to
deafen me, and at those bits of fluff under the bed, and at that dust
on the windows blinding me.

"Why, sir, I don't see anything.

"Tut, tut! hold your tongue, impudence!

"And he does, singing while he sweeps and sweeping while he sings,
laughs in talking and talks in laughing. He has arranged my linen in
the cupboard by the chimney, after papering the receptacle white; and,
with a three-penny blue paper and bordering, he has made a screen. The
room he has painted from the book-case to the fireplace. On the whole,
he is a good fellow."

In the introduction to _Facino Cane_, which Balzac wrote some fifteen
years later, there is a return of memory to this sojourn in the
Lesdiguieres garret. "I lived frugally," he says; "I had accepted all
the conditions of monastic life, so needful to the worker. When it was
fine, the utmost I did was to go for a stroll on the Boulevard
Bourdon. One hobby alone enticed me from my studious habits, and even
that was study. I used to observe the manners of the Faubourg, its
inhabitants, and their characters. Dressed as plainly as the workmen,
indifferent to decorum, I aroused no mistrust, and could mix with them
and watch their