Chapter XII
THOSE WHO STARVE
“Whoever throws himself into the streets of a great city, into the mêlée of rapacities and ambitions, with a pen for a weapon, takes ‘La Misère’ for a flag.”—Jean Richepin, in Les Etapes d’un Réfractaire.
“You have the stuff of three poets in you; but, before you become known, you run the risk of dying six times of hunger, if you count on the income from your poetry for the means to live.”
Etienne Lousteau to Lucien de Rubempré, in Balzac’s Illusions Perdues.
“Cressot died of want the day want forsook him. He died because his body, habituated to suffering, was not able to accept well-being.”