And I only said what was true. It never enters the head of any literary struggler to apply to the Minister of the Interior or to the Director of the Beaux-Arts in his pecuniary difficulties. But it does occur to him to apply to Porcher, and he will be aided. He will find a cheerful face and open bank at Porcher's--two things he will certainly not find at the Home Office. Théaulon, Soulié and Balzac among the dead, and all authors now alive, will bear me out. During the past five-and-twenty years Porcher has probably lent to literary men 500,000 francs. I am as grateful on my own account to Porcher, as Porcher was to Mélesville, and when I visit him nowadays I feel both proud and delighted to see my own portrait, in bust, pastel and medallion, hanging up beside the portraits of his own children. But I am the most grateful of all for those first fifty francs he gave me, which I carried to my mother, and which revived in her heart the heavenly flower of hope that had begun to fade! And ask Madame Porcher, who has known all the finest minds in France, to let you see some of the charming letters she has received. She certainly ought to publish a selection from them. They would not yield in interest to those of Madame de Sévigné, although they would be of a somewhat different nature. We will select one at haphazard, sent her by an author of our acquaintance; it is not one of mine, though the signature is extraordinarily like mine. He had asked for the modest loan of a hundred francs, and had received the reply that he must wait for a few days, after which the transaction could in all probability be carried out. This is the letter:-- "'Wait a few days,'madame! Why, that is the same as telling a man whose head is to be cut off to dance a jig--or make a pun; why, in a few days I shall be a millionaire! I shall have got five hundred francs! If I apply to you, if I bother you, it is because I am reduced to such a state of wretchedness that I could even give points to Job--the most unfortunate hero of times past. If you do not send the hundred francs by my slave, I shall squander my last remaining sous in procuring a clarionette and a poodle-dog, and I shall come and perform with them in front of your door, with the inscription writ large on my stomach: 'Have pity on a literary man whom Madame Porcher has deserted.' Would you have me come and ask you for the hundred francs on my head, or cry, 'Vive la république,' or marry Mademoiselle Moralès?--Would you rather I went to l'Odéon, or unearthed talent _à Cachardy_, or wore _chapeaux gibus_? I will do exactly what you command me, if only you will send me the hundred francs. Send it me ten times over rather than not at all! With deepest and reiterated devotion, X--- _"P. S._--It does not matter to me whether the hundred francs are in silver, in gold or in notes--send whichever is convenient to you."