It was nine o'clock, when, quite exhausted by hunger and fatigue, I sank down on a bench in the Promenade. My glance fell upon the windows of the one-storied houses opposite; I saw children at table having supper, while farther on there were others playing games and running and jumping about. I heard a piano being played, thought of home and my mother, and, seized with a feeling of unutterable loneliness, I began to cry bitterly.
Having put my boots under my head for a pillow, I had just lain down on the bench to try to sleep, when I heard the tramp of regular footsteps approaching from a distance.
"That is the watchman," I thought, "going his nightly round."
Trembling with the fear of being discovered and taken up as a vagabond, to spend the night in a cell, I crept under the bench and hid there until the watchman, wrapped in his long cloak, had passed on. He did not notice me, and thus I was saved from the shame of spending a night in prison.
Of course there was no further possibility of sleep that night, and with an anxious heart I peered out from under the bench. The lights in the windows were extinguished one by one, the watchman passed several times, but not very near to me, and I lay there, cowering under the bench the whole of that cold autumn night, till the break of day. I went to school that day, but gave notice that I was ill, and it was only after a fortnight's sojourn in the hospital of the Friars of Mercy that, once more in good health and much stronger, I was able to start again on my thorny way.
After this sad interval my natural liveliness soon returned. I finished the third and fourth classes in Presburg at the Benedictine College the best way I could, but I took far more interest in the progress I was making in my private studies than in satisfying my professors. This certainly had no good result, for I had begun to study alone, without first acquiring the solid foundation of a college education; but on the other hand it spurred me on to greater industry and perseverance, as, being free from all control, I was master and pupil in one person.
Like all autodidacts, I had greatly overrated the results of my work, paying no attention whatever to the difference between reading a thing superficially and learning it thoroughly. The consequence was I fell into faults that I have never been able to eradicate. But I learned with delight and diligence, and being hardened by constant struggles against Fate, questions of material comfort ceased to trouble me much.
As my circle of acquaintances widened, it was easier for me to gain my living by teaching. I found shelter with an old bachelor, a usurer, whose lodging consisted of a single room and a tiny ante-room where I slept, with the usurer's coat for my covering. This shameful old Harpagon begrudged me even the crumbs he left, although I filled the office of man-servant and watch-dog for him; but he was mistaken in thinking me of much use in the latter capacity, for were I once asleep, a thief, in fact a whole regiment of thieves, could have rushed over my prostrate body without awakening me. Oh! golden hours of youth! With what pleasure I dwell on them to-day, when in my soft, comfortable bed I have difficulty in stealing a few hours of sleep from friend Morpheus! In spite of every comfort and convenience I cannot to-day attain to what I could when I went to bed hungry and slept on the hard, bare boards.
As far as boarding went I was better off just then, for my fame as a teacher had spread in the lower classes of Jewish society, and it was chiefly to cooks and housemaids I gave lessons in reading and writing. In some cases where I had inspired great confidence I was employed to write billets-doux, and in return for this service of love I received a good meal, sometimes even dainties.
I always found that cooks were the persons who most indulged in love-letters; each one seemed to have been crossed in love, and whether its flame was fanned by proximity to the fire or by other unknown reasons, certain it is that the ladies who practised the culinary art were my best customers, and if I was able to commit to paper a sigh, a longing look, a greeting sweet as sugar, or even a kiss, I was sure of a rich reward, and could reckon on a good dinner or supper for days to come.