his extreme good-nature to be regulated by strict prudence. His hand was
always open to distressed writers and struggling artists, and his sole
income was derived from his pen and a journal in which he was chief
editor and formerly sole proprietor. But that journal had of late not
prospered. He had sold or pledged a considerable share in the
proprietorship. He had been compelled also to borrow a sum large for
him, and the debt obtained from a retired bourgeois who lent out his
moneys "by way," he said, "of maintaining an excitement and interest in
life," would in a few days become due. The letter was not from that
creditor; but it was from his publisher, containing a very disagreeable
statement of accounts, pressing for settlement, and declining an offer of
Savarin for a new book (not yet begun) except upon terms that the author
valued himself too highly to accept. Altogether, the situation was
unpleasant. There were many times in which Madame Savarin presumed to
scold her distinguished husband for his want of prudence and thrift. But
those were never the times when scolding could be of no use. It could
clearly be of no use now. Now was the moment to cheer and encourage him;
to reassure him as to his own undiminished powers and popularity, for he
talked dejectedly of himself as obsolete and passing out of fashion; to
convince him also of the impossibility that the ungrateful publisher whom
Savarin's more brilliant successes had enriched could encounter the odium
of hostile proceedings; and to remind him of all the authors, all the
artists, whom he in their earlier difficulties had so liberally assisted,
and from whom a sum sufficing to pay the bourgeois creditor when the day
arrived could now be honourably asked and would be readily contributed.
In this last suggestion the homely prudent good-sense of Madame Savarin
failed her. She did not comprehend that delicate pride of honour which,
with all his Parisian frivolities and cynicism, dignified the Parisian
man of genius. Savarin could not, to save his neck from a rope, have
sent round the begging-hat to friends whom he had obliged. Madame