"Deucedly bad, my boy," he answered, with a heart-breaking smile. "I am going out stupidly with consumption, as they do in the fifth act, you know, when the venerable doctor, with a head like Beranger, feels the first walking gentleman's pulse, and lifts his eyes towards heaven, saying, 'The death-struggle approaches!' Only the difference is that with me it continues; it will not conclude, the death-struggle. Smoke away; that doesn't disturb me," he added, seeing me put my cigar one side, his cough sounding like a death-rattle. I tried to find encouraging words. I talked with him, holding him by the hand and patting him affectionately on the shoulder; but my voice had in my own ears the empty hollowness of deceit, and Miraz, looking at me, seemed to pity my efforts. I was silent. "Look," said he, pointing to his table; "see my work-bench. For six months I have not been able to write." It was true. Nothing could be more sad than that heap of papers covered with dust, and in an old Roman plate there was a bundle of pens, crusted with ink, and like those trophies of rusty foils which hang on the walls of old fencers. I made a new attempt to revive him. Die! at his age. Nonsense! He wasn't taking care of himself. He must pass the winter in the South, drink a good draught of sunlight. He could. He was easy in his money matters. But he stopped me, putting his hand on my arm. "Listen," he said, gravely, "we have seen each other seldom, but you are my oldest, perhaps my best, friend. You have proved me pen in hand. Well, I am going to tell you something in confidence, for you to keep to yourself, unless it may serve on some occasion to discourage the young literary aspirants who bring their manuscripts to you--always a praiseworthy action. Yes, I have been successful. Yes, I have been paid a franc a line. Yes, I have made money, and there in that drawer are a certain number of yellow, green, and red papers from which a bit is clipped every six months, and which represent three or four thousand francs of income. It is rare in our profession, and to gain that poor hoard I have been obliged--I, a poet--to imitate the unsociable virtues of a bourgeois, know how to deny a jewel to my wife, a dress to my daughter. At last I have that money. And I often said to myself, if I should die their bread is assured, and here is a little marriage portion for Helen! And I was content--I was proud!--for I know them, the stories of our widows and our orphans, the fourpenny help of the government, the tobacco shops for six hundred francs in the province, and, if the daughter is intelligent and pretty like mine, the dramatic author, an old friend of the father, who advises her to enter the Conservatoire, and who makes of her--mercy of God! that shall never be. But for all that, my boy, it is necessary that I should not linger. Sickness is expensive, and already it has been necessary to sell one or two bonds from that drawer.