over you at the sight of so much food. You plan to grab a
loaf and run, swallowing it before they catch you; and
you refrain, from pure funk.
You discover the boredom which is inseparable from
poverty; the times when you have nothing to do and,
being underfed, can interest yourself in nothing. For half
a day at a time you lie on your bed, feeling like the jeune
squelette in Baudelaire's poem. Only food could rouse
you. You discover that a man who has gone even a week
on bread and margarine is not a man any longer, only a
belly with a few accessory organs.
This-one could describe it further, but it is all in the
same style-is life on six francs a day. Thousands of
people in Paris live it-struggling artists and students,
prostitutes when their luck is out, out-of-work people of
all kinds. It is the suburbs, as it were, of poverty.
I continued in this style for about three weeks. The
forty-seven francs were soon gone, and I had to do what
I could on thirty-six francs a week from the English
lessons. Being inexperienced, I handled the money
badly, and sometimes I was a day without food. When
this happened I used to sell a few of my clothes, smug-
gling them out of the hotel in small packets and taking
them to a second-hand shop in the Rue de la Montagne
St.