Page 49 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

them, skins and all. After that we felt like new men, and sat
playing chess till the pawnshop opened.
At four o’clock I went back to the pawnshop. I was not
hopeful, for if I had only got seventy francs before, what
could I expect for two shabby overcoats in a cardboard suit-
case? Boris had said twenty francs, but I thought it would be
ten francs, or even five. Worse yet, I might be refused alto-
gether, like poor NUMERO 83 on the previous occasion. I
sat on the front bench, so as not to see people laughing when
the clerk said five francs.
At last the clerk called my number: ‘NUMERO 117!’
‘Yes,’ I said, standing up.
‘Fifty francs?’
It was almost as great a shock as the seventy francs had
been the time before. I believe now that the clerk had mixed
my number up with someone else’s, for one could not have
sold the coats outright for fifty francs. I hurried home and
walked into my room with my hands behind my back, say-
ing nothing. Boris was playing with the chessboard. He
looked up eagerly.
‘What did you get?’ he exclaimed. ‘What, not twenty
francs? Surely you got ten francs, anyway? NOM DE DIEU,
five francs—that is a bit too thick. MON AMI, DON’T say
it was five francs. If you say it was five francs I shall really
begin to think of suicide.’
I threw the fifty-franc, note on to the table. Boris turned
white as chalk, and then, springing up, seized my hand
and gave it a grip that almost broke the bones. We ran out,
bought bread and wine, a piece of meat and alcohol for the

Down and Out in Paris and London