Familiarity did not exclude in each a consciousness of his own value,nor a profound esteem for his neighbor;and finally,as every member of the circle felt that he could afford to receive or to give,no one made a difficulty of accepting.Talk was unflagging,full of charm,and ranging over the most varied topics;words light as arrows sped to the mark.There was a strange contrast between the dire material poverty in which the young men lived and the splendor of their intellectual wealth.They looked upon the practical problems of existence simply as matter for friendly jokes.The cold weather happened to set in early that year.Five of d'Arthez's friends appeared one day,each concealing firewood under his cloak;the same idea had occurred to the five,as it sometimes happens that all the guests at a picnic are inspired with the notion of bringing a pie as their contribution.
All of them were gifted with the moral beauty which reacts upon the physical form,and,no less than work and vigils,overlays a youthful face with a shade of divine gold;purity of life and the fire of thought had brought refinement and regularity into features somewhat pinched and rugged.The poet's amplitude of brow was a striking characteristic common to them all;the bright,sparkling eyes told of cleanliness of life.The hardships of penury,when they were felt at all,were born so gaily and embraced with such enthusiasm,that they had left no trace to mar the serenity peculiar to the faces of the young who have no grave errors laid to their charge as yet,who have not stooped to any of the base compromises wrung from impatience of poverty by the strong desire to succeed.The temptation to use any means to this end is the greater since that men of letters are lenient with bad faith and extend an easy indulgence to treachery.
There is an element in friendship which doubles its charm and renders it indissoluble--a sense of certainty which is lacking in love.These young men were sure of themselves and of each other;the enemy of one was the enemy of all;the most urgent personal considerations would have been shattered if they had clashed with the sacred solidarity of their fellowship.All alike incapable of disloyalty,they could oppose a formidable No to any accusation brought against the absent and defend them with perfect confidence.With a like nobility of nature and strength of feeling,it was possible to think and speak freely on all matters of intellectual or scientific interest;hence the honesty of their friendships,the gaiety of their talk,and with this intellectual freedom of the community there was no fear of being misunderstood;they stood upon no ceremony with each other;they shared their troubles and joys,and gave thought and sympathy from full hearts.The charming delicacy of feeling which makes the tale of Deux Amis a treasury for great souls,was the rule of their daily life.It may be imagined,therefore,that their standard of requirements was not an easy one;they were too conscious of their worth,too well aware of their happiness,to care to trouble their life with the admixture of a new and unknown element.
This federation of interests and affection lasted for twenty years without a collision or disappointment.Death alone could thin the numbers of the noble Pleiades,taking first Louis Lambert,later Meyraux and Michel Chrestien.
When Michel Chrestien fell in 1832his friends went,in spite of the perils of the step,to find his body at Saint-Merri;and Horace Bianchon,Daniel d'Arthez,Leon Giraud,Joseph Bridau,and Fulgence Ridal performed the last duties to the dead,between two political fires.By night they buried their beloved in the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise;Horace Bianchon,undaunted by the difficulties,cleared them away one after another--it was he indeed who besought the authorities for permission to bury the fallen insurgent and confessed to his old friendship with the dead Federalist.The little group of friends present at the funeral with those five great men will never forget that touching scene.
As you walk in the trim cemetery you will see a grave purchased in perpetuity,a grass-covered mound with a dark wooden cross above it,and the name in large red letters--MICHEL CHRESTIEN.There is no other monument like it.The friends thought to pay a tribute to the sternly simple nature of the man by the simplicity of the record of his death.
So,in that chilly garret,the fairest dreams of friendship were realized.These men were brothers leading lives of intellectual effort,loyally helping each other,making no reservations,not even of their worst thoughts;men of vast acquirements,natures tried in the crucible of poverty.Once admitted as an equal among such elect souls,Lucien represented beauty and poetry.They admired the sonnets which he read to them;they would ask him for a sonnet as he would ask Michel Chrestien for a song.And,in the desert of Paris,Lucien found an oasis in the Rue des Quatre-Vents.
At the beginning of October,Lucien had spent the last of his money on a little firewood;he was half-way through the task of recasting his work,the most strenuous of all toil,and he was penniless.As for Daniel d'Arthez,burning blocks of spent tan,and facing poverty like a hero,not a word of complaint came from him;he was as sober as any elderly spinster,and methodical as a miser.This courage called out Lucien's courage;he had only newly come into the circle,and shrank with invincible repugnance from speaking of his straits.One morning he went out,manu in hand,and reached the Rue du Coq;he would sell The Archer of Charles IX.to Doguereau;but Doguereau was out.
