embraced her on both cheeks, publicly.
"Yes, twins. . . ."
XIX
ONE day, when we had been at the Hôtel X. five or six
weeks, Boris disappeared without notice. In the evening
I found him waiting for me in the Rue de Rivoli. He
slapped me gaily on the shoulder.
"Free at last,
mon ami! You can give notice in the
morning. The Auberge opens to-morrow."
"Tomorrow?"
"Well, possibly we shall need a day or two to arrange
things. But, at any rate, no more
cafeterie!
Nous
sommes lancés
, mon ami! My tail coat is out of pawn
already."
His manner was so hearty that I felt sure there was
something wrong, and I did not at all want to leave my
safe and comfortable job at the hotel. However, I had
promised Boris, so I gave notice, and the next morning at
seven went down to the Auberge de Jehan Cottard. It
was locked, and I went in search of Boris, who had once
more bolted from his lodgings and taken a room in the
Rue de la Croix Nivert. I found him asleep, together with
a girl whom he had picked up the night before, and who
he told me was "of a very sympathetic temperament." As
to the restaurant, he said that it was all arranged; there
were only a few little things to be seen to before we
opened.
At ten I managed to get Boris out of bed, and we un-
locked the restaurant. At a glance I saw what the "few
little things" amounted to. It was briefly this: that the
alterations had not been touched since our last visit. The
stoves for the kitchen had not arrived, the water and
electricity had not been laid on, and there was all
manner of painting, polishing and carpentering to be
done. Nothing short of a miracle could open the restau-
rant within ten days, and by the look of things it might
collapse without even opening. It was obvious what had
happened. The
patron was short of money, and he had
engaged the staff (there were four of us) in order to use
us instead of workmen. He would be getting our services
almost free, for waiters are paid no wages, and though he
would have to pay me, he would not be feeding me till
the restaurant opened. In effect, he had swindled us of
several hundred francs by sending for us before the
restaurant was open. We had thrown up a good job for
nothing.
Boris, however, was full of hope. He had only one
idea in his head, namely, that here at last was a chance
of being a waiter and wearing a tail coat once more. For
this he was quite willing to do ten days' work unpaid,
with the chance of being left jobless in the end.
"Patience!" he kept saying. "That will arrange itself. Wait
till the restaurant opens, and we'll get it all back.
Patience,
mon ami! »
We needed patience, for days passed and the restau-
rant did not even progress towards opening. We cleaned
out the cellars, fixed the shelves, distempered the walls,
polished the woodwork, whitewashed the ceiling, stained
the floor; but the main work, the plumbing and
gasfitting and electricity, was still not done, because the
patron
could not pay the bills. Evidently he was almost
penniless, for he refused the smallest charges, and he
had a trick of swiftly disappearing when asked for
money. His blend of shiftiness and aristocratic manners
made him very hard to deal with. Melancholy duns came
looking for him at all hours, and by instruction we
always told them that he was at Fontainebleau, or Saint
Cloud, or some other place that was safely distant.
Meanwhile, I was getting hungrier and hungrier. I had
left the hotel with thirty francs, and I had to go back
immediately to a diet of dry bread. Boris had managed
in the beginning to extract an advance of sixty francs
from the
patron, but he had spent half of it, in
redeeming his waiter's clothes, and half on the girl of
sympathetic temperament. He borrowed three francs a
day from Jules, the second waiter, and spent it on
bread. Some days we had not even money for tobacco.
Sometimes the cook came to see how things were
getting on, and when she saw that the kitchen was still
bare of pots and pans she usually wept. Jules, the
second waiter, refused steadily to help with the work. He
was a Magyar, a little dark, sharp-featured fellow in spec-
tacles, and very talkative; he had been a medical
student, but had abandoned his training for lack of
money. He had a taste for talking while other people
were working, and he told me all about himself and his
ideas. It appeared that he was a Communist, and had
various strange theories (he could prove to you by
figures that it was wrong to work), and he was also,
like most Magyars, passionately proud. Proud and lazy
men do not make good waiters. It was Jules's dearest
boast that once when a customer in a restaurant had
insulted him, he had poured a plate of hot soup down
the customer's neck, and then walked straight out
without even waiting to be sacked.
As each day went by Jules grew more and more en-
raged at the trick the
patron had played on us. He had a
spluttering, oratorical way of talking. He used to walk
up and down shaking his fist, and trying to incite me
not to work:
"Put that brush down, you fool! You and I belong to
proud races; we don't work for nothing, like these
damned Russian serfs. I tell you, to be cheated like
this is torture to me. There have been times in my life,
when someone has cheated me even of five sous, when