future, but I now realised that I must do something at
once. I decided to start looking for a job, and-very
luckily, as it turned out-I took the precaution of paying
two hundred francs for a month's rent in advance. With
the other two hundred and fifty francs, besides the
English lessons, I could live a month, and in a month I
should probably find work. I aimed at becoming a guide
to one of the tourist companies, or perhaps an
interpreter. However, a piece of bad luck prevented this.
One day there turned up at the hotel a young Italian
who called himself a compositor. He was rather an am-
biguous person, for he wore side whiskers, which are
the mark either of an apache or an intellectual, and
nobody was quite certain in which class to put him.
Madame F. did not like the look of him, and made him
pay a week's rent in advance. The Italian paid the rent
and stayed six nights at the hotel. During this time he
managed to prepare some duplicate keys, and on the last
night he robbed a dozen rooms, including mine. Luckily,
he did not find the money that was in my pockets, so I
was not left penniless. I was left with just forty-seven
francs-that is, seven and tenpence.
This put an end to my plans of looking for work. I
had now got to live at the rate of about six francs a day,
and from the start it was too difficult to leave much
thought for anything else.