"Because you have mentioned the name of Mélesville three times."
"Mélesville! Why, monsieur, I would kill myself for his sake."
"I will not be so inquisitive as to inquire the reason of this devotion."
"Oh, it is easily explained. I was a hairdresser and used to cut M. Mélesville's hair; he was in Fortune's good books, but that didn't matter! he wrote plays. Ten or twelve years ago that was, and then authors did not sell their tickets, they gave them away."
"Monsieur Porcher, believe me, if I were richer I would give you mine with the greatest pleasure."
"You do not understand: tickets, in those times, were given away, not sold. M. Mélesville, then, gave me his tickets; I went to see his plays with friends, and I applauded. He produced so many plays, and gave me so many tickets, that an idea came into my head; namely, instead of taking them and giving them away for nothing, to buy them from him, and sell them, so I proposed the business to him. 'You are a simpleton, Porcher,' he said to me. 'What the deuce could you make out of that?' 'Let me try.' 'Oh, try if you like, my dear fellow.' I tried it, monsieur, and it succeeded. From that time, I have carried on my little business, and if I ever acquire a fortune, it will be to M. Mélesville I shall owe it. Come home with me, and I will show you his portrait along with those of my wife and children."
I have been several times to Porcher's home since then,—probably a hundred times to ask his help, once only to give him assistance,—and every time I have been there I have looked at Mélesville's portrait, raised by the gratitude of that worthy man to the level of those of his wife and children. Once, Porcher had something or other to ask of Cavé, when Cavé was Director of the Beaux-Arts. I took Porcher to Cavé's house, and I said to the latter—
"Look here, I am bringing you a man who has done more for literature during the past five-and-twenty years than you and your predecessors and successors have done, or will do, in a century."
And I only said what was true. It never enters the head of any literary struggler to apply to the Minister of the Interior or to the Director of the Beaux-Arts in his pecuniary difficulties. But it does occur to him to apply to Porcher, and he will be aided. He will find a cheerful face and open bank at Porcher's—two things he will certainly not find at the Home Office. Théaulon, Soulié and Balzac among the dead, and all authors now alive, will bear me out.
During the past five-and-twenty years Porcher has probably lent to literary men 500,000 francs. I am as grateful on my own account to Porcher, as Porcher was to Mélesville, and when I visit him nowadays I feel both proud and delighted to see my own portrait, in bust, pastel and medallion, hanging up beside the portraits of his own children. But I am the most grateful of all for those first fifty francs he gave me, which I carried to my mother, and which revived in her heart the heavenly flower of hope that had begun to fade! And ask Madame Porcher, who has known all the finest minds in France, to let you see some of the charming letters she has received. She certainly ought to publish a selection from them. They would not yield in interest to those of Madame de Sévigné, although they would be of a somewhat different nature. We will select one at haphazard, sent her by an author of our acquaintance; it is not one of mine, though the signature is extraordinarily like mine. He had asked for the modest loan of a hundred francs, and had received the reply that he must wait for a few days, after which the transaction could in all probability be carried out. This is the letter:—