stood straight upright, not supporting himself with his
stick, and the manager did not see that he was lame.
"Yes," he said, "we want two men in the cellars.
Perhaps you would do. Come inside." Then Boris
moved, the game was up. « Ah, » said the manager,
"you limp.
Malheureusement---
"
We enrolled our names at agencies and answered
advertisements,_ but walking everywhere made us
slow, and we seemed to miss every job by half an
hour. Once we very nearly got a job swabbing out
railway trucks, but at the last moment they rejected us
in favour of Frenchmen. Once we answered an
advertisement calling for hands at a circus. You had to
shift benches and clean up litter, and, during the
performance, stand on two tubs and let a lion jump
through your legs. When we got to the place, an hour
before the time named, we found a queue of fifty men
already waiting. There is some attraction in lions,
evidently.
Once an agency to which I had applied months
earlier sent me a
petit bleu, telling me of an Italian
gentleman who wanted English lessons. The
petit bleu
said "Come at once" and promised twenty francs an
hour. Boris and I were in despair. Here was a splendid
chance, and I could not take it, for it was impossible to
go to the agency with my coat out at the elbow. Then it
occurred to us that I could wear Boris's coat-it did did
not match my trousers, but the trousers were grey and
might pass for flannel at a short distance. The coat was
so much too big for me that I had to wear it unbuttoned
and keep one hand in my pocket. I hurried out, and
wasted seventy-five centimes on a bus fare to get to the
agency. When I got there I found that the Italian had
changed his mind and left Paris.
Once Boris suggested that I should go to Les Halles
and try for a job as a porter. I arrived at half-past four
the morning, when the work was getting into its swing.
Seeing a short, fat man in a bowler hat directing some
porters, I went up to him and asked for work.
Before answering he seized my right hand and felt the palm.
"You are strong, eh?" he said.
"Very strong," I said untruly.
"
Bien. Let me see you lift that crate."
It was a huge wicker basket full of potatoes. I took
hold of it, and found that, so far from lifting it, I could
not even move it. The man in the bowler hat watched
me, then shrugged his shoulders and turned away. I
made off When I had gone some distance I looked
back and saw
four men lifting the basket on to a cart.
It weighed three hundredweight, possibly. The man
had seen that I was no use, and taken this way of
getting rid of me.
Sometimes in his hopeful moments Boris spent
fifty centimes on a stamp and wrote to one of his ex-
mistresses, asking for money. Only one of them ever
replied. It was a woman who, besides having been
his mistress, owed him two hundred francs. When
Boris saw the letter waiting and recognised the
handwriting, he was wild with hope. We seized the
letter and rushed up to Boris's room to read it, like a
child with stolen sweets. Boris read the letter, then
handed it silently to me. It ran:
MY LITTLE CHERISHED WOOLF,-- With what delight did I
open thy charming letter, reminding me of the days of our
perfect love, and of the so dear kisses which I have received
from thy lips. Such memories linger for ever in the heart, like
the perfume of a flower that is dead.
"As to thy request for two hundred francs, alas! it is
impossible. Thou dost not know, my dear one, how I am
desolated to hear of thy embarrassments. But what wouldst
thou? In this life which is so sad, trouble comes to everyone. I
too have had my share. My little sister has been ill (ah, the
poor little one, how she suffered!) and we are obliged to pay I
know not what to the doctor. All our money is gone and we
are passing, I assure thee, very difficult days.
"Courage, my little wolf, always the courage! Remember that
the bad days are not for ever, and the trouble which seems so
terrible will disappear at last.
"Rest assured, my dear one, that I will remember thee always.
And receive the most sincere embraces of her who has never
ceased to love thee, thy
"YVONNE."
This letter disappointed Boris so much that he went
straight to bed and would not look for work again that
day.
My sixty francs lasted about a fortnight. I had
given up the pretence of going out to restaurants, and
we used to eat in my room, one of us sitting on the
bed and the other on the chair. Boris would contribute
his two francs and I three or four francs, and we
would buy bread, potatoes, milk and cheese, and make
soup over my spirit lamp. We had a saucepan and a
coffee-bowl and one spoon; every day there was a
polite squabble as to who should eat out of the
saucepan and who out of the coffee-bowl (the
saucepan held more), and every day, to my secret
anger, Boris gave in first and had the saucepan.
Sometimes we had more bread in the evening,
sometimes not. Our linen was getting filthy, and it
was three weeks since I had had a bath; Boris, so he
said, had not had a bath for months. It was tobacco
that made everything tolerable. We had plenty of
tobacco, for some time before Boris had met a soldier
(the soldiers are given their tobacco free) and bought
twenty or thirty packets at fifty centimes each.
All this was far worse for Boris than for me. The
walking and sleeping on the floor kept his leg and
back in constant pain, and with his vast Russian
appetite he suffered torments of hunger, though he
never seemed to grow thinner. On the whole he was