Page 134 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

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his life went on for about a fortnight, with a slight
Tincrease of work as more customers came to the res-
taurant. I could have saved an hour a day by taking a room
near the restaurant, but it seemed impossible to find time
to change lodgings—or, for that matter, to get my hair cut,
look at a newspaper, or even undress completely. After ten
days I managed to find a free quarter of an hour, and wrote
to my friend B. in London asking him if he could get me
a job of some sort—anything, so long as it allowed more
than five hours sleep. I was simply not equal to going on
with a seventeen-hour day, though there are plenty of peo-
ple who think nothing of it. When one is overworked, it is
a good cure for self-pity to think of the thousands of people
in Paris restaurants who work such hours, and will go on
doing it, not for a few weeks, but for years. There was a girl
in a BISTRO near my hotel who worked from seven in the
morning till midnight for a whole year, only sitting down to
her meals. I remember once asking her to come to a dance,
and she laughed and said that she had not been farther than
the street comer for several months. She was consumptive,
and died about the time I left Paris.
After only a week we were all neurasthenic with fa-
tigue, except Jules, who skulked persistently. The quarrels,
intermittent at first, had now become continuous. For

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