"Why, great heavens, man, I can't shoot so! Wait until they light on yon fence, and then I'll take a crack at them."
He could no better shoot at stationary objects, however, than at game on the wing. Hard by his cottage a hare had burrowed in a potato-field. Every morning and every evening Murger fired at the hare, but with such little effect, that the hare soon took no notice either of Murger or his gun, and gambolled before them both as if they were simply a scarecrow. Murger bagged but one piece of game in the whole course of his life, and the way this was done happened in this wise. One day he was asleep at the foot of a tree in the Forest of Fontainebleau,—his gun by his side. He was suddenly awakened by the barking of a dog which he knew belonged to the most adroit poacher that levied illicit tribute on the imperial domain. The dog continued to bark and to look steadily up into the tree. Murger followed the dog's eyes, but could discover nothing. The poacher ran up, saying,—"Quick, Monsieur Murger! quick! Give me your gun. Don't you see it?"
Murger replied,—"See it? See what?"
"Why, a pheasant! a splendid cock! There he is on the top limb!"
The poacher aimed and fired; the pheasant fell at Murger's feet. "Take the bird and put it in your game-bag, Monsieur Murger, and tell everybody you killed it."
Murger gratefully accepted the present; and this was the first and only time that Murger ever bagged a bird.
But the cloud which darkened his sky now was the cloud which had lowered on all his life,—poverty. He was always fevered by the care and anxiety of procuring money. Life is expensive to a man occupying such a position as Murger filled, and French authors are ill paid. A French publisher thinks he has done wonders, if he sells all the copies of an edition of three thousand volumes; and if any work reaches a sale of sixteen or seventeen thousand volumes, the publisher is ready to cry, "Miracle!" Further, men who lead intellectual lives are almost necessarily extravagant of money. They know not its value. They know, indeed, that ten mills make one cent, and that ten cents make one dime, and that ten dimes make one dollar; but they are ignorant of the practical value of these denominations of the great medium of exchange. They cannot "jew," and know not that the slight percentage they would take off the price asked is a prize worth contending for. Again, the physical exhaustion or reaction which almost invariably follows mental exertion requires stimulants of some kind or other to remove the pain—it is an acute pain—which reaction brings upon the whole system. These stimulants, whether they be good dinners, or brilliant company, or generous wines, or parties of pleasure, are always costly. Besides, life in Paris is such an expensive mode of existence, the simplest pleasures there are so very costly, and there are so many microscopic issues through which money pours away in that undomestic life, in that career passed almost continually in public, that one must have a considerable fortune, or lead an extremely retired life. A fashionable author, whose books are in every book-shop window, and whose plays are posted for performance on every wall, cannot lead a secluded life; and all the circumstances we have hinted at conspire to make his life expensive. In vain Murger fled the great city. It pursued him even in the country. Admirers and parasites sought him out even in his retreat, and forced their way to his table. There is another reason for Murger's life-long poverty: he worked slowly, and this natural difficulty of intellectual travail was increased by his exquisite taste and desire of perfection. The novel was written and re-written time and again. The plot was changed; the characters were altered; each phrase was polished and repolished. Where ordinary writers threw off half a dozen volumes, Murger found it hard to fit a single volume for the press. Ordinary writers grew rich in writing speedily forgotten novels; he continued poor in writing novels which will live for many years. Then, Murger's vein of talent made him work for theatres which gave more reputation than ready money. He was too delicate a writer to construct those profitable dramas which run a hundred or a hundred and fifty nights and place ten or twenty thousand dollars in the writer's purse. His original poverty kept him poor. He could not afford to wait until the seed he had sown had grown and ripened for the sickle; so he fell into the hands of usurers, who purchased the crop while it was yet green, and made the harvest yield them profits of fifty or seventy-five per centum.
His distress during the last years of his life was as great as the distress of his youth. His published letters tell a sorrowful tale. They are filled with apprehensions of notes maturing only to be protested, or complaints of inability to go up to Paris one day because he has not a shirt to wear, another day because he cannot procure the seventy-five cents which are the railway-fare from Fontainebleau to Paris. Here is one of his letters, one of the gayest of them It is charming, but sad:—
"I send you my little stock. Carry it instantly to Monsieur Heugel, the music-publisher in the Rue Vivienne, next door to Michel Levy's. Go the day afterwards to Michel Levy's for the answer. Read it, and if it shows that Monsieur Heugel buys my songs, go to him with the blank receipt, herein inclosed, which you will fill up as he will point out, according to the usual conditions. It is ten dollars a song; but as there is a poor song among them, and money I must have, take whatever he gives you; but you must pretend as if you expected ten dollars for each song. This money must be used to take up Saccault's note, which is due the fifteenth. Take the address of the holder, and pay it before it is protested. You will be allowed till the next day to pay it. Be active in this matter, and let me hear how things turn out. I cannot, in reason, in my present situation, take a room at a rent of a hundred and twenty dollars a year.[E] We have cares enough for the present; therefore let us not sow that seed of embarrassment which flowers every three months in the shape of quarterly rent. Do not give at the outside more than eighty dollars for the room, even though we be embarrassed by its smallness. I hope we may have means before long of being more delicate in our selection; but at present put a leaf to your patience, for the horizon is black enough to make ink withal. However, the little dialogue (which has been quite successful) I have just had with the muses has given me better spirits. I have a fever of working which is high enough to give me a real fever. I have shaken the box, and see that it is not empty. But I stood in need of this evidence, for in my own eyes I had fallen as low as the Public Funds in 1848. Return here before the money Michel Levy gave you is exhausted, for I cannot get any more for you. I am working half the day and half the night. I feel that the great flood-tide of 'copy' is at hand. My laundress and my pantaloons have both deserted me. I am obliged to use grape-vine leaves for my pocket-handkerchief.... There is nothing new here. The dogs are in good health, but they do not look fat; I am afraid they have fasted sometimes. Our chimney is again inhabited by a family of swallows; they say that is a good sign: maybe it means that we shall have fire all the winter long."
To this letter was added a postscript which one of the dogs was supposed to have written:—