Page 27 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

colonel.
‘AH, MAIS, MON AMI, the ups and downs of life! A
captain in the Russian Army, and then, piff! the Revolu-
tion—every penny gone. In 1916 I stayed a week at the Hotel
Edouard Sept; in 1920 I was trying for a job as night watch-
man there. I have been night watchman, cellarman, floor
scrubber, dishwasher, porter, lavatory attendant. I have
tipped waiters, and I have been tipped by waiters.
‘Ah, but I have known what it is to live like a gentleman,
MON AMI. I do not say it to boast, but the other day I was
trying to compute how many mistresses I have had in my
life, and I made it out to be over two hundred. Yes, at least
two hundred … Ah, well, CA REVIENDRA. Victory is to
him who fights the longest. Courage!’ etc. etc.
Boris had a queer, changeable nature. He always wished
himself back in the army, but he had also been a waiter long
enough to acquire the waiter’s outlook. Though he had nev-
er saved more than a few thousand francs, he took it for
granted that in the end he would be able to set up his own
restaurant and grow rich. All waiters, I afterwards found,
talk and think of this; it is what reconciles them to being
waiters. Boris used to talk interestingly about Hotel life:
‘Waiting is a gamble,’ he used to say; ‘you may die poor,
you may make your fortune in a year. You are not paid
wages, you depend on tips—ten per cent of the bill, and
a commission from the wine companies on champagne
corks. Sometimes the tips are enormous. The barman at
Maxim’s, for instance, makes five hundred francs a day.
More than five hundred, in the season … I have made two

Down and Out in Paris and London