'We cannot lend anything on that,' said the
pawnbroker's clerk, disdainfully pushing the things away from him.
You had the excellent habit of never despairing. You said, 'We
must wait until this evening; at night all clothes are new; and to
take every precaution, I shall go to the pawnbroker's shop in the
Rue du Fouare, where all the poor go; as they are accustomed there
to see nothing pledged but rags and tatters, our clothes will
glitter like barbaric pearl and gold.' Alas! the pawnbroker in the
Rue du Fouare was as cruel as his brethren. So the next morning in
sheer despair I went to pledge my only frock-coat, and I did this
to lend half the sum to that incessant borrower, G----. Lastly, on
the nineteenth of November, we sold some books. Fortune smiled on
us; we had a chicken-soup with a superabundance of laurel. Do you
remember an excellent shopkeeper of the Rue du Faubourg Saint
Jacques, near the city-gate, who, we were told, not only sold
thread, but kept a circulating library? What a circulating library
it was! Plays, three odd volumes of Anne Radcliffe's novels,--and
if the old lady had never made our acquaintance, the inhabitants
of the Faubourg Saint Jacques would never have known of the
existence of 'Letters upon Mythology' and 'De Profundis,' two
books I was heartless enough to sell, notwithstanding all their
titles to my respect.
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