Conscience | Page 8

I passed a good examination and was

preparing for my degree, when I left the school owing to a quarrel. I
had made some money by giving private lessons, and I found myself
the possessor of nearly eighty francs. I started for Paris, where I arrived
at five o'clock one morning in June, and where I knew, no one. I had a
small trunk containing a few shirts, which obliged me to take a carriage.
I told the coachman to take me to a hotel in the Latin Quarter. 'Which
hotel?' he asked; 'I do not care,' I answered. 'Do you wish to go to the
Hotel du Senat?' The name pleased me; perhaps it was an omen. He
took me to the Hotel du Senat, where, with what I had left of my eighty
francs, I paid a month in advance. I stayed there eight years."
"That is remarkable."
"What else could I do? I knew Latin and Greek as well as any man in
France, but as far as anything else was concerned I was as ignorant as a
schoolmaster. The same day I tried to make use of what I knew, and I
went to a publisher of classic books, of whom I had heard my professor
of Greek literature speak. After questioning me he gave me a copy of
Pindar to prepare with Latin notes, and advanced me thirty francs,
which lasted me a month. I came to Paris with the desire to work, but
without having made up my mind what to do. I went wherever there
were lectures, to the Sorbonne, to the College de France, to the Law
School, and to the School of Medicine; but it was a month before I
came to a decision. The subtleties of law displeased me, but the study
of medicine, depending upon the observation of facts, attracted me, and
I decided to become a doctor."
"A marriage of reason."
"No, a marriage for love. Because, if I had consulted reason, it would
have told me that to marry medicine when one has nothing--neither
family to sustain you nor relatives to push you--would be to condemn
yourself to a life of trials, of battles, and of misery. My student life was
happy; I worked hard, and by giving lessons in Latin I had enough to
eat. When I received as house-surgeon six, eight, nine hundred francs, I
thought it a large fortune, and I would have remained in this position
for the rest of my life if I had been able to do so, but when I took my
degree of doctor I was obliged to leave the hospital. The possessor of

several thousand francs, I should have followed rigorously my dream of
ambition. While attending the mistress of one of my comrades I made
the acquaintance of an upholsterer, who suggested that he should
furnish an apartment for me, and that I might pay him later. I yielded to
temptation. Remember, I had passed eight years in the Hotel du Senat,
and I knew nothing of Paris life. A home of my own! My own furniture,
and a servant in my anteroom! I should be somebody! My upholsterer
could have installed me in his own quarter of Paris, and perhaps could
have obtained some patients for me among his customers, who are rich
and fashionable. But he did not do this, probably concluding that with
my awkward appearance I would not be a success with such people.
When you are successful it is original to be a peasant--people find you
clever; but before success comes to you it is a disgrace. He furnished
me an apartment in a very respectable house in the Rue Louis-le-Grand.
When I went into it I had debts to the amount of ten thousand francs
behind me, the interest on this sum, the rent of two thousand four
hundred francs, not a sou in my pocket, not a relative--"
"That was courageous."
"I did not know that in Paris everything is accomplished through
influence, and I imagined that an intelligent man could make his way
without assistance. I was to learn by experience. When a new doctor
arrives anywhere his brother doctors do not receive him with much
sympathy. 'What does this intruder want?' 'Are there not enough of us
already?' He is watched, and the first patient that he loses is made use
of as an example of his ignorance or imprudence, and his position
becomes uncomfortable. The chemists of my quarter whom I called
upon did not receive me very warmly; they made me feel the distance
that separates an honorable merchant from a beggar, and I was given to
understand that they could patronize me only on condition that I
ordered the specialties that they wished to profit by--iron from