Only four faded walls, yet mine, all mine.
Oh, you fine folks, a pauper scorns your pity.
Look, where above me stars of rapture shine;
See, where below me gleams the siren city . . .
Am I not rich? -- a millionaire no less,
If wealth be told in terms of Happiness.




Ten ~sous~. . . . I think one can sing best of poverty when one is holding it
at arm's length. I'm sure that when I wrote these lines,
fortune had for a moment tweaked me by the nose. To-night, however,
I am truly down to ten ~sous~. It is for that I have stayed in my room
all day, rolled in my blankets and clutching my pen with clammy fingers.
I must work, work, work. I must finish my book before poverty crushes me.
I am not only writing for my living but for my life. Even to-day
my Muse was mutinous. For hours and hours anxiously I stared
at a paper that was blank; nervously I paced up and down my garret;
bitterly I flung myself on my bed. Then suddenly it all came.
Line after line I wrote with hardly a halt. So I made another
of my Ballads of the Boulevards. Here it is:




Julot the ~Apache~