Page 43 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

VII

y money oozed away—to eight francs, to four francs,
Mto one franc, to twenty-five centimes; and twenty-five
centimes is useless, for it will buy nothing except a newspa-
per. We went several days on dry bread, and then I was two
and a half days with nothing to eat whatever. This was an
ugly experience. There are people who do fasting cures of
three weeks or more, and they say that fasting is quite pleas-
ant after the fourth day; I do not know, never having gone
beyond the third day. Probably it seems different when one
is doing it voluntarily and is not underfed at the start.
The first day, too inert to look for work, I borrowed a
rod and went fishing in the Seine, baiting with bluebottles.
I hoped to catch enough for a meal, but of course I did not.
The Seine is full of dace, but they grew cunning during the
siege of Paris, and none of them has been caught since, ex-
cept in nets. On the second day I thought of pawning my
overcoat, but it seemed too far to walk to the pawnshop, and
I spent the day in bed, reading the MEMOIRS OF SHER-
LOCK HOLMES. It was all that I felt equal to, without food.
Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condi-
tion, more like the after-effects of influenza than anything
else. It is as though one had been turned into a jellyfish, or as
though all one’s blood had been pumped out and luke-wann
water substituted. Complete inertia is my chief memory of

Down and Out in Paris and London