the world you are liable to the most craven panics. When
you have only three francs you are quite indifferent; for
three francs will feed you till to-morrow, and you cannot
think further than that. You are bored, but you are not
afraid. You think vaguely, "I shall be starving in a day or
two-shocking, isn't it?" And then the mind wanders to
other topics. A bread and margarine diet does, to some
extent, provide its own anodyne.
And there is another feeling that is a great consola-
tion in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up
has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of
pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down
and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs -
and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them,
and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.
IV
ONE day my English lessons ceased abruptly. The
weather was getting hot and one of my pupils, feeling
too lazy to go on with his lessons, dismissed me. The
other disappeared from his lodgings without notice,
owing me twelve francs. I was left with only thirty
centimes and no tobacco. For a day and a half I had
nothing to eat or smoke, and then, too hungry to put it
off any longer, I packed my remaining clothes into my
suitcase and took them to the pawnshop.