They sat up all night. He suddenly became
very gay, and told story after story in a most vivid and humorous
manner. His friends roared with laughter, and one of them begged him to
abandon poetry and become a prose-writer, predicting for him a most
brilliant career. But poetry has its peculiar fascinations, and is not
relinquished without painful throes. Murger refused to cease versifying.
He had pernicious habits of labor. He never rose until three o'clock in
the afternoon, and never began to write until after the lamp was
lighted. He wrote until daybreak. If sleep came, if inspiration lagged,
he would resort to coffee, and drink it in enormous quantities. One may
turn night into day without great danger, upon condition of leading a
temperate and regular life; for Nature has wonderful power of adapting
herself to all circumstances, upon condition that irregularity itself he
regular in its irregularity. He fell into this habit from poverty. He
was too poor to buy fuel and comfortable clothes, so he lay in bed to
keep warm; he worked in bed,--reading, writing, correcting, buried under
the comfortable bedclothes. He would sometimes drink "as many as six
ounces of coffee.
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