Page 102 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

and in three minutes she was back with two pounds of bread
under one arm and a half-litre bottle of wine under the oth-
er. 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 stop-
ping 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 El-
oise! 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

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