"You believe that human strength is unequal to such demands. It is natural to think so; and yet I speak the truth. My parents, Mr Walpole, humble and poor, but good and loving, sent me to Paris with all the money they could afford for my education. I was ambitious, and deemed it more than enough for my purpose. When half my time was spent here, unhappily for me both father and mother were carried off by a malignant fever. It was heavy blow, and threatened my destruction; threatened it, however, but for a moment. I had determined to arrive at eminence; and when does the determination give way in the breast of him who feels and knows his power equal to his aim? I had a brother, to whom I wrote, telling him of my situation, and asking him for the loan of a few louis-d'or until my studies were completed, when I promised to repay the debt with interest. He sent me the quarter of the sum for which I had begged, with a long cold letter of remonstrance, bidding me give up my profession, and apply myself to the humbler pursuits of my family. I returned to my brother both money and letter, and the day on which I did so saw me without a meal. I had not a farthing in the world. Had not a woman who lodged in a room below given me a crust of bread, I must have committed crime to assuage the cries of nature. How I existed for days, I no longer remember. But I remember well hearing of a rich nobleman, renowned for his wealth and piety, and for all the virtues which the world confers upon the possessor of vast estates. In a moment of enthusiasm and mistaken reliance, I sat down and penned a petition to this great personage. I spoke as an intellectual man to an intellectual man; as one working his difficult way through obscurity and trouble to usefulness and honour—and requiring only a few crumbs from the rich man's table to be at ease, and happy at his toil. I begged in abject humility for those crumbs, and received a lying and cold-blooded excuse instead of them. I crouched at his gate with a spirit worn by anxiety and apprehension, and his slaves hunted me away from it. You have passed through that same gate with me; you were witness of my triumph at the bedside of his child!"
"You mean his excellency—the operation?"
"I do."
"How little the rich," said I, "know of the misery, the privations, endured by those who in poverty acquire the knowledge that is to benefit mankind so largely. How ignorant are they of their trials!"
"If you would know of the ignorance, the folly, and the vice of the rich," proceeded the baron, always at home upon this his favourite subject, "you must listen to an endless tale. Ever willing and eager to detract from the merits of the man of science, and to attribute to him the assumption of powers beyond human grasp—and ever striving to drag down the results of his long and patient study to the level of their own brutish ignorance—they are made the sport, the tools, and playthings of every charlatan and trickster, as they should be. You shall be satisfied, Mr Walpole, when you see the men who treat you with scorn and contumely, pulled like puppets by a wire, and made to dance to any tune the piper listeth. Hope nothing from the rich."
"And from the poor, sir?"
"Every thing," said the baron, almost solemnly. "From their hearts shall spring the gratitude that will cheer you in your course, and solace you in your gloom. Fame, and the grateful attachment of my humble friends, have furnished me with a victory which the gold of the king could not purchase. But we forget Saint Sulpice. I am not a hypocrite, as you judge me, Mr Walpole. Be witness yourself if my presence there this day has proved me one. Refused and cast away by this nobleman, I had nothing to do but to dispose for a trifle of a few articles of linen which were still in my possession. I sold them for a song, and believing failure to be impossible, still struggled on. In that room I dwelt, living for days upon nothing richer than bread and water, and regarding my little money with the agony of a miser, as every demand diminished the small store. From morn till night I laboured. I almost passed my life amongst the dead. Well was it for me, as it proved, that my necessities drove me to the dead-house to forget hunger, and obtain eleemosynary warmth. Dismissed at dusk from this temporary home, I returned to the garret for my crust, and carried the book which I had borrowed to the common passage of the house, from whose dim lamp I received the glimmer that served me to read, and to sustain the incensed ambitious spirit that would not quell within me. The days glanced by quicker than the lightning. I could not read enough; I could not acquire knowledge sufficient, in that brief interval of days, between the acquisition of my little wealth and the spending of my last farthing. The miserable moment came. I was literally penniless, and without the means of realizing any thing. For a week I retained possession of my room through the charity of my landlord, and I was furnished with two loaves by a good fellow who lived in the same house, and who proffered his assistance so kindly, so generously, and well, that I received his benefaction only that I might not give him pain by a refusal. The second week of charity had already begun, when, entering my cold and hapless room in my return from the hospital, I was detained at the door by hearing my name pronounced in a loud and angry tone. I listened with a sickening earnestness and recognized the voice of my landlord and that of the good neighbour in high discussion. Something had been said which much offended the latter; for the words which I caught from him were those of remonstrance and reproach.
"'For shame, for shame!' said he, 'you have children of your own, and they may need a friend one day. Think of them before you do so hard a thing.'
"'I do think of them,' replied the landlord sharply; 'and, that they mayn't starve, I must keep my matters straight.'
"'Give him another week or two. You will not feel it. I'll undertake to keep him. It isn't much, Heaven knows! that I can do for him; but at a pinch, man should make shift for man. Say you'll do it!'