Page 37 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

VI

e again failed to find work the next day, and it was
Wthree weeks before the luck changed. My two hun-
dred francs saved me from trouble about the rent, but
everything else went as badly as possible. Day after day Bo-
ris and I went up and down Paris, drifting at two miles an
hour through the crowds, bored and hungry, and finding
nothing. One day, I remember, we crossed the Seine eleven
times. We loitered for hours outside service doorways, and
when the manager came out we would go up to him ingra-
tiatingly, cap in hand. We always got the same answer: they
did not want a lame man, nor a man without experience.
Once we were very nearly engaged. While we spoke to the
manager Boris stood straight upright, not supporting him-
self with his stick, and the .manager did not see that he was
lame. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we want two men in the cellars. Per-
haps you would do. Come inside.’ Then Boris moved, the
game was up. ‘Ah,’ said the manager, ‘you limp. MALHEU-
REUSEMENT—’
We enrolled our names at agencies and answered adver-
tisements, but walking everywhere made us slow, and we
seemed to miss every job by half an hour. 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