"At night I went home, at the very moment when my fellow lodger also
came in--a water-carrier named Bourgeat, a native of Saint-Flour. We
knew each other as two lodgers do who have rooms off the same landing,
and who hear each other sleeping, coughing, dressing, and so at last
become used to one another. My neighbor informed me that the landlord,
to whom I owed three quarters' rent, had turned me out; I must clear out
next morning. He himself was also turned out on account of his
occupation. I spent the most miserable night of my life. Where was I to
get a messenger who could carry my few chattels and my books? How could
I pay him and the porter? Where was I to go? I repeated these
unanswerable questions again and again, in tears, as madmen repeat their
tunes. I fell asleep; poverty has for its friends heavenly slumbers full
of beautiful dreams.

"Next morning, just as I was swallowing my little bowl of bread soaked
in milk, Bourgeat came in and said to me in his vile Auvergne accent:

"'_Mouchieur l'Etudiant_, I am a poor man, a foundling from the hospital
at Saint-Flour, without either father or mother, and not rich enough to
marry. You are not fertile in relations either, nor well supplied with
the ready? Listen, I have a hand-cart downstairs which I have hired for
two sous an hour; it will hold all our goods; if you like, we will try
to find lodgings together, since we are both turned out of this. It is
not the earthly paradise, when all is said and done.'

"'I know that, my good Bourgeat,' said I. 'But I am in a great fix. I
have a trunk downstairs with a hundred francs' worth of linen in it, out
of which I could pay the landlord and all I owe to the porter, and I
have not a hundred sous.'