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He still felt reluctant to do so, because of the way he was dressed and because of the three hundred thousand francs.
    He found a modest but decent place near Boulevard Saint-Michel and went in. There was a smell of cooking. A night porter in slippers fiddled for a long time with the keys before handing him one.
    â€œFourth floor … the second door … Try not to make a noise.”
    For the first time, at forty-eight—as though he had made himself a present of it, on that birthday that everyone had forgotten!—he was a man all alone, but he was not yet a man in the street.
    He was still concerned about giving offense, of seeming out of place. For it was not shyness. He was not embarrassed for his own sake, but he was afraid of embarrassing other people.
    For ten minutes, at least, he had been prowling around the narrow house, which he had found without too much difficulty. The sun was shining; the butchers’ and dairymen’s shops were full of provisions which, exuding their mingled smells, overflowed onto the sidewalk, and it was difficult to make one’s way through the bustling crowd of housewives and vendors in the street market of Rue de Buci.
    From time to time, with an instinctive gesture of which he was ashamed, Monsieur Monde felt his pockets to make sure nobody had stolen his bank notes. In fact, how was he going to manage when he had to change clothes in front of someone?
    The problem worried him for some time. Then he found a solution, but he needed paper and string. Paper was easy enough. He merely had to buy a newspaper from the first newsstand he saw. Wasn’t it rather odd to buy a whole ball of string in order to use only a scrap of it?
    That was what he did. He walked about for a long time, through a district selling food exclusively, before he discovered a stationer’s shop.
    And he couldn’t do it in public. He went into a bistro, ordered a coffee, and went down to the washroom; this was in the cellar, next to the bottles, and the door did not shut. There was only a gray concrete hole in the ground and the space was so narrow that his shoulders touched the walls.
    He made a parcel of the bank notes, tied it up securely, and threw the rest of the paper and string down the hole; when he pulled the chain the water spurted over his shoes and splashed his trousers.
    He forgot to drink his cup of coffee. He was conscious of looking like a criminal, and turned back to make sure that the proprietor was not staring after him.
    He had to go into the narrow house with its blue-painted façcade, on which was inscribed in large black letters: Clothing for sale and hire .
    â€œDo you know what Joseph does with the clothes you give him?” his wife had remarked one day, in an aggressive tone. “He sells them in a shop on Rue de Buci. Since they’re almost new when you give them to him …”
    She was exaggerating. She always exaggerated. She hated seeing money spent.
    â€œI don’t see why, considering we pay him, and pay him well, far better than he deserves, we should give him this bonus.…”
    He went in. A little man who must have been an Armenian received him without a trace of the surprise he had anticipated. And he said hesitantly:
    â€œI would like a suit … something very simple, not showy.… I don’t know if you see what I mean? …”
    â€œGood quality, just the same?”
    If he’d dared, he would have said: “A suit like everybody else’s.”
    There were clothes hanging everywhere throughout the house, in every room, town suits, evening dress clothes particularly, riding habits, and even two policemen’s uniforms.
    â€œA darkish cloth, please … Not too new …”
    He felt worried, shortly after, because he had put down his parcel in the first room and now had gone up to the second floor. Suppose someone stole it?
    He was shown suits, but almost all of them were too narrow, or too long