Page 41 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

and sleeping on the floor kept his leg and back in con-
stant pain, and with his vast Russian appetite he suffered
torments of hunger, though he never seemed to grow thin-
ner. On the whole he was surprisingly gay, and he had vast
capacities for hope. He used to say seriously that he had a
PATRON saint who watched over him, and when things
were very bad he would search the gutter for money, saying
that the saint often dropped a two-franc piece there. One
day we were waiting in the rue Royale; there was a Russian
restaurant near by, and we were going to ask for a job there.
Suddenly, Boris made up his mind to go into the Madeleine
and bum a fifty-centime candle to his PATRON saint. Then,
coming out, he said that he would be on the safe side, and
solemnly put a match to a fifty-centime stamp, as a sacrifice
to the immortal gods. Perhaps the gods and the saints did
not get on together; at any rate, we missed the job.
On some mornings Boris collapsed in the most utter
despair. He would lie in bed almost weeping, cursing the
Jew with whom he lived. Of late the Jew had become restive
about paying the daily two francs, and, what was worse, had
begun putting on intolerable airs of PATRONage. Boris said
that I, as an Englishman, could not conceive what torture it
was to a Russian of family to be at the mercy of a Jew.
‘A Jew, MON AMI, a veritable Jew! And he hasn’t even
the decency to be ashamed of it. To think that I, a captain
in the Russian Army—have I ever told you, MON AMI, that
I was a captain in the Second Siberian Rifles? Yes, a cap-
tain, and my father was a colonel. And here I am, eating the
bread of a Jew. A Jew …

0 Down and Out in Paris and London