It is a very sad thing to have reached the point where one wonders whether one will have any dinner. And yet there are every day in Paris people who find themselves in that predicament; but it is comforting to know that such people generally end by dining; some very meagrely, to be sure, others moderately well, and others very well indeed and as if they were still prosperous. Those who succeed in dining well generally accomplish that end by some stratagem, by some new exertion of the imagination, which, however, must well-nigh have exhausted its ingenuity. What seems to me most surprising is that they dine gayly, with an excellent appetite, and with no concern for the morrow. One becomes accustomed to everything, they say; if that is philosophy, I do not envy the philosophers.

Especially when one has fallen into adversity by his own fault, his misconduct, his dissipated life, it would seem that adversity must be most painful, most bitter, most difficult to endure, and that shame must be his constant companion.

Those who are really victims of the injustice of fate, or of the stupidity of their contemporaries, can, at all events, hold their heads erect and refrain from blushing because of their poverty. Such were Homer, who was not appreciated during his life; Plautus, who was reduced to the necessity of turning a potter's wheel; Xylander, who sold his work on Dion Cassius to obtain a crust of bread; Lelio Girardi, author of a curious history of the Greek and Latin poets, who was reduced to a similar extremity; Usserius, too, a learned chronologist; Cornelius Agrippa, who wrote on the vanity of learning, and the excellent qualities of womankind; and the illustrious Miguel Cervantes, to whom we owe the admirable romance of Don Quixote.

We may add to this list Paul Borghese, who died of hunger; Tasso, who lived a whole week on a crown, which someone loaned him: true, he ceased to be poor, but only on the eve of his death; Aldus Manutius, who was so poor that he became bankrupt simply by borrowing money enough to ship his library from Venice to Rome, whither he had been summoned; Cardinal Bentivoglio, to whom we owe the history of the civil wars of Flanders: he did not leave enough to pay for his burial; Baudoin, translator of almost all the Latin authors; Vauglas, the grammarian; Du Ryer, author of tragedies, and translator of the Koran; all these lived in indigence. But we will pause here; examples are not lacking, but they would carry us too far; and then, they are not cheerful, and are out of our usual line; it was Monsieur Cherami's plight which induced us to cite so many. Let us now return to that gentleman.

Monsieur Cherami, whom we have seen so poorly dressed, and uncertain as to whether he will have any dinner, had once occupied a brilliant position, and had been noted for his dress, his bearing, and his gallant adventures. His father, who had been an eminent figure in the magistracy during the Consulate, had no other child. Arthur (such was Monsieur Cherami's baptismal name) had been petted, fondled, worshipped, spoiled, and his parents had proposed to make a great man of him. Poor parents! who believe that they can make their son an eminent personage, just as they would make him a tailor or a bootmaker. Arthur did become great, but in stature only. They sent him to school and gave him an excellent education; young Cherami learned readily enough; he was intelligent and quick-witted; he became especially strong in such elegant accomplishments as fencing, riding, and gymnastics; but he had the greatest aversion for serious work of every sort, and when his parents asked him: "Do you want to be a lawyer, a doctor, a man of letters, a broker, or a general?" Arthur replied: "I prefer to walk on the boulevards and smoke big eight-sou cigars."

This reply, which left nothing to be desired in the way of frankness, indicated a most generous inclination to consume the fortune which his parents had so laboriously amassed in business, and which, in fact, they left to their beloved son without undue delay. At the age of twenty-two, Arthur, who had as yet done nothing else than promenade and smoke, found himself an orphan and possessed of thirty-five thousand francs a year.

Thereupon, he abandoned himself to his taste for pleasure, augmented by a very keen penchant for the fair sex; and the fair sex is never ungrateful to a rich and open-handed man. Arthur was not handsome: his crooked nose, his small eyes, and his pointed chin, did not tend to make him a very attractive youth; however, the women told him again and again that he was charming, adorable, irresistible, and he believed it. We are so ready to believe anything that flatters our self-esteem! And yet, Arthur was no fool; indeed, he had his share of wit; but he was totally lacking in common sense, and without common sense, wit, as a general rule, serves no other purpose than to make one do foolish things. La Rochefoucauld makes this reflection with respect to women; for my part, I consider it perfectly applicable to both sexes.

At thirty years, Beau Cherami had spent, consumed, swallowed, his entire inheritance. But he had been noted for his costumes, his horses, his conquests, his love affairs. Eight years to run through a fortune worth thirty-five thousand francs a year—that is not such a very rapid pace; we often see young men who use up three times as much in much less time; to be sure, young Arthur did not gamble on the Bourse.

Being obliged then to sell his furniture, horses, and silverware, Cherami lived some time longer on the product of the sale; but his friends already began to find him less clever and amiable, and the women no longer called him their handsome Arthur. That was because he could no longer make them beautiful presents; and instead of loaning money to his friends and paying their shares of the expense of an orgy, he asked them to pay for him, and often applied to them for loans.

At thirty-five, Arthur was what these good friends of his called utterly dÉgommÉ: in other words, ruined. After he had lived for some time on credit, his tailor, his shirtmaker, his bootmaker, refused to trust him any more; whereupon he was obliged to wear garments that were worn and faded, and eventually threadbare; hats that had turned from black to rusty; worn boots that were rarely polished. When Cherami, in this garb, said to one of his former acquaintances: "I have left my purse at home; lend me twenty francs, will you?" the acquaintance would make a wry face and loan him five francs instead of twenty, and sometimes nothing at all; for a man in a threadbare coat does not inspire confidence. We loan money to the rich, because we think that they will return it.

After some time, Beau Arthur found that this last source of income was exhausted. He had said so often to his quondam friends: "I have forgotten my purse," or: "I have just discovered that there's a hole in my pocket," that they fled as soon as they saw him; many of them even ceased to return his bow, and pretended not to know him. Misfortune is the reef on which friendship is wrecked.

However, Cherami still possessed a remnant of his handsome fortune; a very small remnant, but enough to keep him from starving; and chance had decreed that the ci-devant beau could not dispose of it, otherwise he would not have failed to make away with it like the rest.