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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.

    Down and Out in Paris and London
    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 gentle-
    man 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 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 hur-
    ried 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 in 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
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    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 hundred-
    weight, 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
    recognized 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 Wolf,
    With what delight did I open thy charming letter, re-
    minding me of the days of our perfect love, and of the so
    dear kisses which I have received from thy lips. Such memo-
    ries 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 conies 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

    Down and Out in Paris and London
    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 al-
    ways. 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