George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London

left work, and two detectives searched the hotel from

top to bottom, but the ring was never found. The

chambermaid had a lover in the bakery, and he had

baked the ring into a roll, where it lay unsuspected

until the search was over.

Once Valenti, at a slack time, told me a story about

himself.

"You know,

mon p'tit , this hotel life is all very well,

but it's the devil when you're out of work. I expect you

know what it is to go without eating, eh?

Forcément ,

otherwise you wouldn't be scrubbing dishes. Well, I'm

not a poor devil of a

plongeur ; I'm a waiter, and I went

five days without eating, once. Five days without even a

crust of bread Jesus Christ!

"I tell you, those five days were the devil. The only

good thing was, I had my rent paid in advance. I was

living in a dirty, cheap little hotel in the Rue Sainte

Éloise up in the Latin quarter. It was called the Hotel

Suzanne May, after some famous prostitute of the time

of the Empire. I was starving, and there was nothing I

could do; I couldn't even go to the cafés where the hotel

proprietors come to engage waiters, because I

hadn't the price of a drink. All I could do was to lie in

bed getting weaker and weaker, and watching the bugs

running about the ceiling. I don't want to go through

that again, I can tell you.

"In the afternoon of the fifth day I went half mad; at

least, that's how it seems to me now. There was an old

faded print of a woman's head hanging on the wall of

my room, and I took to wondering who it could be; and

after about an hour I realised that it must be Sainte

Éloise, who was the patron saint of the quarter. I had

never taken any notice of the thing before, but now, as I

lay staring at it, a most extraordinary idea came into my

head.

"

'Écoute, mon cher ,' I said to myself, 'you'll be

starving to death if this goes on much longer. You've

got to do something. Why not try a prayer to Sainte

Éloise? Go down on your knees and ask her to send you

some money. After all, it can't do any harm. Try it!'

"Mad, eh? Still, a man will do anything when he's

hungry. Besides, as I said, it couldn't do any harm. I got

out of bed and began praying. I said:

" 'Dear Sainte Éloise, if you exist, please send me

some money. I don't ask for much just enough to buy

some bread and a bottle of wine and get my strength

back. Three or four francs would do. You don't know

how grateful I'll be, Sainte Éloise, if you help me this

once. And be sure, if you send me anything, the first

thing I'll do will be to go and burn a candle for you, at

your church down the street. Amen.'

"I put in that about the candle, because I had heard

that saints like having candles burnt in their honour. I

meant to keep my promise, of course. But I am an

atheist and I didn't really believe that anything would

come of it.

"Well, I got into bed again, and five minutes later

there came a bang at the door. It was a girl called Maria,

a big fat peasant girl who lived at our hotel. She was a

very stupid girl, but. a good sort, and I didn't much care

for her to see me in the state I was in.

"She cried out at the sight of me.

'Nom de Dieu !' she

said, 'what's the matter with you? What are you doing

in bed at this time of day?

Quelle mine que tu as ! You look

more like a corpse than a man.'

"Probably I did look a sight. I had been five days

without food, most of the time in bed, and it was three

days since I had had a wash or a shave. The room was a

regular pigsty, too.

" 'What's the matter?' said Maria again.

" 'The matter!' I said; 'Jesus Christ! I'm starving. I

haven't eaten for five days. That's what's the matter.'

"Maria was horrified. 'Not eaten for five days?' she

said. 'But why? Haven't you any money, then?'

" 'Money!' I said. 'Do you suppose I should be

starving if I had money? I've got just five sous in the

world, and I've pawned everything. Look round the

room and see if there's anything more I can sell or

pawn. If you can find anything that will fetch fifty

centimes, you're cleverer than I am.'

"Maria began looking round the room. She poked

here and there among a lot of rubbish that was lying

about, and then suddenly she got quite excited. Her

great thick mouth fell open with astonishment.

" 'You idiot!' she cried out. 'Imbecile! What's

this ,

then?'

"I saw that she had picked up an empty oil

bidon that

had been lying in the corner. I had bought it weeks

before, for an oil lamp I had before I sold my things.

" 'That?' I said. 'That's an oil

bidon . What about it?'

" 'Imbecile! Didn't you pay three francs fifty

deposit on it?'

"Now, of course I had paid the three francs fifty.

They always make you pay a deposit on the

bidon , and

you get it back when the

bidon is returned. But I'd for-

gotten all about it.

" 'Yes---' I began.

" 'Idiot!' shouted Maria again. She got so excited

that she began to dance about until I thought her

sabots would go through the floor. 'Idiot!

T'es fou!T'es

fou

! What have you got to do but take it back to the

shop and get your deposit back? Starving, with three

francs fifty staring you in the face! Imbecile!'

"I can hardly believe now that in all those five days

I had never once thought of taking the

bidon back to the

shop. As good as three francs fifty in hard cash, and it

had never occurred to me! I sat up in bed. 'Quick!' I

shouted to Maria, 'you take it for me. Take it to the

grocer's at the corner-run like the devil. And bring

back food!

Maria didn't need to be told. She grabbed the bidon

and went clattering down the stairs like a herd of

elephants, and in three minutes she was back with two

pounds of bread under one arm and a half-litre bottle

of wine under the other. I didn't stop to thank her; I

just seized the bread and sank my teeth in it. Have you

noticed how bread tastes when you have been hungry

for a long time? Cold, wet, doughy-like putty almost.

But, Jesus Christ, how good it was! As for the wine, I

sucked it all down in one draught, and it seemed to go

straight into my veins and flow round my body like

new blood. Ah, that made a difference!

"I wolfed the whole two pounds of bread without

stopping to take breath. Maria stood with her hands on

her hips, watching me eat. 'Well, you feel better, eh?'

she said when I had finished.

" 'Better!' I said. 'I feel perfect! I'm not the same

man as I was five minutes ago. There's only one thing

in the world I need now-a cigarette.'

"Maria put her hand in her apron pocket. 'You can't

have it,' she said. 'I've no money. This is all I had left

out of your three francs fifty-seven sous. It's no good;

the cheapest cigarettes are twelve sous a packet.'

" 'Then I can have them!' I said. 'Jesus Christ, what

a piece of luck! I've got five sous-it's just enough.'

"Maria took the twelve sous and was starting out to the

tobacconist's. And then something I had forgotten all

this time came into my head. There was that cursed

Sainte Éloise! I had promised her a candle if she sent

me money; and really, who could say that the prayer

hadn't come true? 'Three or four francs,' I had said;

and the next moment along came three francs fifty.

There was no getting away from it. I should have to

spend my twelve sous on a candle.

"I called Maria back. 'It's no use,' I said; 'there is

Sainte Éloise-I have promised her a candle. The twelve

sous will have to go on that. Silly, isn't it? I can't have

my cigarettes after all.'

« 'Sainte Éloise?' said Maria. 'What about Sainte

Éloise?'

" 'I prayed to her for money and promised her a

candle,' I said. 'She answered the prayer-at any rate,

the money turned up. I shall have to buy that candle.

It's a nuisance, but it seems to me I must keep my

promise.'

" 'But what put Sainte Éloise into your head?' said

Maria.

" 'It was her picture,' I said, and I explained the

whole thing. 'There she is, you see,' I said, and I pointed

to the picture on the wall.

"Maria looked at the picture, and then to my surprise

she burst into shouts of laughter. She laughed more and

more, stamping about the room and holding her fat sides

as though they would burst. I thought she had gone mad.

It was two minutes before she could speak.

" 'Idiot!' she cried at last.

'T'es fou! T'es fou! Do you

mean to tell me you really knelt down and prayed to that

picture? Who told you it was Sainte Éloise?'

" 'But I made sure it was Sainte Éloise!' I said.

" 'Imbecile! It isn't Sainte Éloise at all. Who do you

think it is?'

" 'Who?' I said.

" 'It is Suzanne May, the woman this hotel is called

after.'

"I had been praying to Suzanne May, the famous

prostitute of the Empire. . . .

"But, after all, I wasn't sorry. Maria and I had a good

laugh, and then we talked it over, and we made out that I

didn't owe Sainte Éloise anything. Clearly it wasn't she

who had answered the prayer, and there was no need to

buy her a candle. So I had my packet of cigarettes after

all."

XVI

TIME went on and the Auberge de Jehan Cottard showed

no signs of opening. Boris and I went down there one

day during our afternoon interval and found that none of

the alterations had been done, except the indecent

pictures, and there were three duns instead of two. The

patron

greeted us with his usual blandness,

and the next instant turned to me (his prospective

dishwasher) and borrowed five francs. After that I felt

certain that the restaurant would never get beyond talk.

The

patron , however, again named the opening for

"exactly a fortnight from to-day," and introduced us to

the woman who was to do the cooking, a Baltic Russian

five feet tall and a yard across the hips. She told us that

she had been a singer before she came down to cooking,

and that she was very artistic and adored English

literature, especially

La Case de l'Oncle Tom .

In a fortnight I had got so used to the routine of a

plongeur's

life that I could hardly imagine anything

different. It was a life without much variation. At a

quarter to six one woke with a sudden start, tumbled into

grease-stiffened clothes, and hurried out with dirty face

and protesting muscles. It was dawn, and the windows

were dark except for the workmen's cafés. The sky was

like a vast flat wall of cobalt, with roofs and spires of

black paper pasted upon it. Drowsy men were sweeping

the pavements with ten-foot besoms, and ragged families

picking over the dustbins. Workmen, and girls with a

piece of chocolate in one hand and a croissant in the

other, were pouring into the Metro stations. Trams, filled

with more workmen, boomed gloomily past. One

hastened down to the station, fought for a place-one does