for bills he had accepted, and which had fallen due. He foolishly
took an iced drink, which he hoped would refresh him in his
distressing condition, but it immediately made him lose his
voice, and from that day he was the victim of a hoarseness which
with terrific rapidity ripened the seeds of consumption,
doubtless latent in him, and developed that incurable disease.
For months he had been growing weaker and weaker, filling us at
last with the gloomiest anxiety: he alone believed the supposed
chill would be cured, if he could heat his room better for a
time. One day I sought him out in his lodging, where I found him
in the icy-cold room, huddled up at his writing-table, and
complaining of the difficulty of his work for Didot, which was
all the more distressing as his employer was pressing him for
advances he had made.

He declared that if he had not had the consolation in those
doleful hours of knowing that I had, at any rate, got my Dutchman
finished, and that a prospect of success was thus opened to the
little circle of friends, his misery would have been hard indeed
to bear. Despite my own great trouble, I begged him to share our
fire and work in my room. He smiled at my courage in trying to
help others, especially as my quarters offered barely space
enough for myself and my wife. However, one evening he came to us
and silently showed me a letter he had received from Villemain,
the Minister of Education at that time, in which the latter
expressed in the warmest terms his great regret at having only
just learned that so distinguished a scholar, whose able and
extensive collaboration in Didot's issue of the Greek classics
had made him participator in a work that was the glory of the
nation, should be in such bad health and straitened