These stimulants,
whether they be good dinners, or brilliant company, or generous wines,
or parties of pleasure, are always costly. Besides, life in Paris is
such an expensive mode of existence, the simplest pleasures there are so
very costly, and there are so many microscopic issues through which
money pours away in that undomestic life, in that career passed almost
continually in public, that one must have a considerable fortune, or
lead an extremely retired life. A fashionable author, whose books are in
every book-shop window, and whose plays are posted for performance on
every wall, cannot lead a secluded life; and all the circumstances we
have hinted at conspire to make his life expensive. In vain Murger fled
the great city. It pursued him even in the country. Admirers and
parasites sought him out even in his retreat, and forced their way to
his table. There is another reason for Murger's life-long poverty: he
worked slowly, and this natural difficulty of intellectual travail was
increased by his exquisite taste and desire of perfection. The novel was
written and re-written time and again. The plot was changed; the
characters were altered; each phrase was polished and repolished.
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