de Rothschilds'
banking-house. He actually did make application to Madame de Rothschild.
Here is the letter in which he records this application:--
"_15th August, 1844._
"I am delighted to be at last able to write you without being obliged to
describe wretchedness. Ill-fortune seems to begin to tire of pursuing
me, and good-fortune appears about to make advances to me. Madame
Rothschild, to whom I wrote begging her to get her husband to give me a
situation, informed her correspondent of it, and told him to send for
and talk with me. I could not obtain a place, but I was offered ten
dollars rather delicately, and I took it. As soon as I received it, I
went as fast as I could to put myself in condition to be able to go out
in broad daylight."
We scarcely know which is the saddest to see: Henry Murger accepting ten
dollars from Madame de Rothschild's generous privy purse,--for it is
alms, soften it as you may,--or to observe the happiness this paltry sum
gives him. How deeply he must have been steeped in poverty!
But now the very worst was over. In 1848 he sent a contribution to "Le
Corsaire," a petty newspaper of odds and ends, of literature and of
gossip.
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