saw him take a good overcoat from an old woman, put
two white billiard-balls into her hand, and then push
her rapidly out of the shop before she could protest. It
would have been a pleasure to flatten the Jew's nose, if
only one could have afforded it.
These three weeks were squalid and uncomfortable,
and evidently there was worse coming, for my rent
would be due before long. Nevertheless, things were not
a quarter as bad as I had expected. For, when you are
approaching poverty, you make one discovery which
outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and
mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but
you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty:
the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain
limits, it is actually true that the less money you have,
the less you worry. When you have a hundred francs in
the world you are liable to the most craven panics. When
you have only three francs you are quite indifferent; for
three francs will feed you till to-morrow, and you cannot
think further than that. You are bored, but you are not
afraid. You think vaguely, "I shall be starving in a day or
two-shocking, isn't it?" And then the mind wanders to
other topics. A bread and margarine diet does, to some
extent, provide its own anodyne.
And there is another feeling that is a great consola-
tion in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up
has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of
pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down
and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs -
and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them,
and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.
IV
ONE day my English lessons ceased abruptly. The
weather was getting hot and one of my pupils, feeling
too lazy to go on with his lessons, dismissed me. The
other disappeared from his lodgings without notice,
owing me twelve francs. I was left with only thirty
centimes and no tobacco. For a day and a half I had
nothing to eat or smoke, and then, too hungry to put it
off any longer, I packed my remaining clothes into my
suitcase and took them to the pawnshop. This put an
end to all pretence of being in funds, for I could not take
my clothes out of the hotel without asking Madame F.'s
leave. I remember, however, how surprised she was at
my asking her instead of removing the clothes on the
sly, shooting the moon being a common trick in our
quarter.
It was the first time that I had been in a French
pawnshop. One went through grandiose stone portals
(marked, of course, «
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité"-they
write that even over the police stations in France) into a
large, bare room like a school classroom, with a counter
and rows of benches. Forty or fifty people were waiting.
One handed one's pledge over the counter and sat down.
Presently, when the clerk had assessed its value he
would call out, « Numéro such and such, will you take
fifty francs?" Sometimes it was only fifteen francs, or
ten, or five-whatever it was, the whole room knew it.
As I came in the clerk called with an air of offence,
«
Numéro 83-here!" and gave a little whistle and a
beckon, as though calling a dog.
Numéro 83 stepped to
the counter; he was an old bearded man, with an over-
coat buttoned up at the neck and frayed trouser-ends.
Without a word the clerk shot the bundle across the
counter-evidently it was worth nothing. It fell to the
ground and came open, displaying four pairs of men's
woollen pants. No one could help laughing. Poor
Numéro
83 gathered up his pants and shambled out, muttering to
himself.
The clothes I was pawning, together with the suitcase,
had cost over twenty pounds, and were in good condition.
I thought they must be worth ten pounds, and a quarter
of this (one expects quarter value at a pawnshop) was
two hundred and fifty or three hundred francs. I waited
without anxiety, expecting two hundred francs at the
worst.
At last the clerk called my number: «
Numéro 97!"
"Yes," I said, standing up.
"Seventy francs?"
Seventy francs for ten pounds' worth of clothes! But it
was no use arguing; I had seen someone else attempt to
argue, and the clerk had instantly refused the pledge. I
took the money and the pawnticket and walked out. I
had now no clothes except what I stood up in-the coat
badly out at the elbow-an overcoat, moderately pawnable,
and one spare shirt. Afterwards, when it was too late, I
learned that it was wiser to go to a pawnshop in the
afternoon. The clerks are French, and, like most French
people, are in a bad temper till they have eaten their
lunch.
When I got home, Madame F. was sweeping the
bistro floor. She came up the steps to meet me. I could
see in her eye that she was uneasy about my rent.
"Well," she said, "what did you get for your clothes?
Not much, eh?"
"Two hundred francs," I said promptly.
"
Tiens!" she said, surprised; "well, that's not bad.
How expensive those English clothes must be!"
The lie saved a lot of trouble, and, strangely enough, it
came true. A few days later I did receive exactly two
hundred francs due to me for a newspaper article, and,
though it hurt to do it, I at once paid every penny of it in
rent. So, though I came near to starving in the following
weeks, I was hardly ever without a roof.
It was now absolutely necessary to find work, and I
remembered a friend of mine, a Russian waiter named
Boris, who might be able to help me. I had first met him