"
Monsieur Champfleury introduced Henry Murger to Monsieur Arsene
Houssaye, who was then chief editor of "L'Artiste," and it happened
oddly enough that Murger wrote nothing but poetry for this journal.
Monsieur Houssaye took a great fancy to Murger, and persuaded him, for
the sake of "effect" on the title-pages of books and on the backs of
magazines, to change Henri to Henry, and give Murger a German
physiognomy by writing it Muerger. As Frenchmen treat their names with as
much freedom as we use towards old gloves, Murger instantly adopted
Monsieur Houssaye's suggestion, and clung as long as he lived to the new
orthography of his name. He began to find it less difficult to procure
each day his daily bread, but still the gaunt wolf, Poverty, continued
to glare on him. "Our existence," he said, "is like a ballad which has
several couplets; sometimes all goes well, at other times all goes
badly, then worse, next worst, and so on; but the burden never changes;
'tis always the same,--Misery! Misery! Misery!" One day he became so
absolutely and hopelessly poor, that he was undecided whether to enlist
as a sailor or take a clerk's place in the Messrs.
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