beside the bed; she tried to elude me, but I seized her by
the throat-like this, do you see?-tight! She struggled, she
began to cry out for mercy, but I held her fast, forcing
back her head and staring down into her face. She was
twenty years old, perhaps; her face was the
broad, dull face of a stupid child, but it was coated
with paint and powder, and her blue, stupid eyes,
shining in the red light, wore that shocked, distorted
look that one sees nowhere save in the eyes of these
women. She was some peasant girl, doubtless, whom
her parents had sold into slavery.
"Without another word I pulled her off the bed and
threw her on to the floor. And then I fell upon her like
a tiger! Ah, the joy, the incomparable rapture of that
time! There,
messieurs et dames, is what I would expound to
you;
voilà (amour! There is the true love, there is the only
thing in the world worth striving for; there is the thing
beside which all your arts and ideals, all your
philosophies and creeds, all your fine words and high
attitudes, are as pale and profitless as ashes. When
one has experienced love-the true love-what is there in
the world that seems more than a mere ghost of joy?
"More and more savagely I renewed the attack.
Again and again the girl tried to escape; she cried out
for mercy anew, but I laughed at her.
" 'Mercy!' I said, 'do you suppose I have come here
to show mercy? Do you suppose I have paid a
thousand francs for that?' I swear to you, messieurs et
dames, that if it were not for that accursed law that robs
us of our liberty, I would have murdered her at that
moment.
« Ah, how she screamed, with what bitter cries of
agony. But there was no one to hear them; down there
under the streets of Paris we were as secure as at the
heart of a pyramid. Tears streamed down the girl's
face, washing away the powder in long, dirty smears.
Ah, that irrecoverable time! You,
messieurs et dames, you
who have not cultivated the finer sensibilities of love,
for you such pleasure is almost beyond conception.
And I too, now that my youth is gone-ah, youth!-
shall never again see life so beautiful as that. It
is finished.
« Ah yes, it is gone-gone for ever. Ah, the poverty,
the shortness, the disappointment of human joy! For
in reality-car
en réalité, what is the duration of the
supreme moment of love? It is nothing, an instant, a
second perhaps. A second of ecstasy, and after that-
dust, ashes, nothingness.
"And so, just for one instant, I captured the
supreme happiness, the highest and most refined
emotion to which human beings can attain. And in the
same moment it was finished, and I was left-to what?
All my savagery, my passion, were scattered like the
petals of a rose. I was left cold and languid, full. of
vain regrets; in my revulsion I even felt a kind of pity
for the weeping girl on the floor. Is it not nauseous,
that we should be the prey of such mean emotions? I
did not look at the girl again; my sole thought was to
get away. I hastened up the steps of the vault and out
into the street. It was dark and bitterly cold, the
streets were empty, the stones echoed under my heels
with a hollow, lonely ring. All my money was gone, I
had not even the price of a taxi fare. I walked back
alone to my cold, solitary room.
"But there,
messieurs et dames, that is what I promised
to expound to you. That is Love. That was the happiest
day of my life."
He was a curious specimen, Charlie. I describe
him, just to show what diverse characters could be
found flourishing in the Coq d'Or quarter.
III
I
L I V E D in the Coq d'Or quarter for about a year
and a half. One day, in summer, I found that I had just
four hundred and fifty francs left, and beyond this
nothing but thirty-six francs a week, which I earned by giving
English lessons. Hitherto I had not thought about the
future, but I now realised that I must do something at
once. I decided to start looking for a job, and-very
luckily, as it turned out-I took the precaution of paying
two hundred francs for a month's rent in advance. With
the other two hundred and fifty francs, besides the
English lessons, I could live a month, and in a month I
should probably find work. I aimed at becoming a guide
to one of the tourist companies, or perhaps an
interpreter. However, a piece of bad luck prevented this.
One day there turned up at the hotel a young Italian
who called himself a compositor. He was rather an am-
biguous person, for he wore side whiskers, which are
the mark either of an apache or an intellectual, and
nobody was quite certain in which class to put him.
Madame F. did not like the look of him, and made him
pay a week's rent in advance. The Italian paid the rent
and stayed six nights at the hotel. During this time he
managed to prepare some duplicate keys, and on the last
night he robbed a dozen rooms, including mine. Luckily,
he did not find the money that was in my pockets, so I
was not left penniless. I was left with just forty-seven
francs-that is, seven and tenpence.
This put an end to my plans of looking for work. I
had now got to live at the rate of about six francs a day,
and from the start it was too difficult to leave much
thought for anything else. It was now that my experi-
ences of poverty began-for six francs a day, if not actual
poverty, is on the fringe of it. Six francs is a shilling,
and you can live on a shilling a day in Paris if you know
how. But it is a complicated business.
It is altogether curious, your first contact with
poverty. You have thought so much about poverty - it