places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is
the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with
the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that
intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might
be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with
the poor. For what do the majority of educated people
know about poverty? In my copy of Villon's poems the
editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the
line «
Ne pain ne voyent qu'aux fenestres" by a footnote; so
remote is even hunger from the educated man's
experience. From this ignorance a superstitious fear of
the mob results quite naturally. The educated man
pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty
to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work
minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory.
"Anything," he thinks, "any injustice,
sooner than let that mob loose." He does not see that
since there is no difference between the mass of rich and
poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The
mob is in fact loose now, and-in the shape of rich men-is
using its power to set up enormous treadmills of
boredom, such as "smart" hotels.
To sum up. A
plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave,
doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at
work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he
would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated
people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the
process, because they know nothing about him and
consequently are afraid of him. I say this of the
plongeur
because it is his case I have been considering; it would
apply equally to numberless other types of worker. These
are only my own ideas about the basic facts of a
plongeur's
life, made without reference to immediate economic
questions, and no doubt largely platitudes. I present
them as a sample of the thoughts that are put into one's
head by working in a hotel.
XXIII
As soon as I left the Auberge de Jehan Cottard I went to
bed and slept the clock round, all but one hour. Then I
washed my teeth for the first time in a fortnight, bathed
and had my hair cut, and got my clothes out of pawn. I
had two glorious days of loafing. I even went in my best
suit to the Auberge, leant against the bar and spent five
francs on a bottle of English beer. It is a curious
sensation, being a customer where you have been a slave's
slave. Boris was sorry that I had left the restaurant just at
the moment when we were lancés and there was a. chance
of making money. I have heard
from him since, and he tells me that he is making a
hundred francs a day and has set up a girl who is trés
serieuse and never smells of garlic.
I spent a day wandering about our quarter, saying
good-bye to everyone. It was on this day that Charlie
told me about the death of old Roucolle the miser, who
had once lived in the quarter. Very likely Charlie was
lying as usual, but it was a good story.
Roucolle died, aged seventy-four, a year or two
before I went to Paris, but the people in the quarter still
talked of him while I was there. He never equalled
Daniel Dancer or anyone of that kind, but he was an
interesting character. He went to Les Halles every
morning to pick up damaged vegetables, and ate cat's
meat, and wore newspaper instead of underclothes, and
used the wainscoting of his room for firewood, and
made himself a pair of trousers out of a sack-all this
with half a million francs invested. I should like very
much to have known him.
Like many misers, Roucolle came to a bad end
through putting his money into a wildcat scheme. One
day a Jew appeared in the quarter, an alert, businesslike
young chap who had a first-rate plan for smuggling
cocaine into England. It is easy enough, of course, to buy
cocaine in Paris, and the smuggling would be quite
simple in itself, only there is always some spy who
betrays the plan to the customs or the police. It is said
that this is often done by the very people who sell the
cocaine, because the smuggling trade is in the hands of a
large combine, who do not want competition. The Jew,
however, swore that there was no danger. He knew a way
of getting cocaine direct from Vienna, not through the
usual channels, and there would be no blackmail to pay.
He had got into touch with Roucolle through a young
Pole, a student at the Sorbonne, who
was going to put four thousand francs into the scheme if
Roucolle would put six thousand. For this they could buy
ten pounds of cocaine, which would be worth a small
fortune in England.
The Pole and the Jew had a tremendous struggle to
get the money from between old Roucolle's claws. Six
thousand francs was not much-he had more than that
sewn into the mattress in his room-but it was agony for
him to part with a sou. The Pole and the Jew were at him
for weeks on end, explaining, bullying, coaxing, arguing,
going down on their knees and imploring him to produce
the money. The old man was half frantic between greed
and fear. His bowels yearned at the thought of getting,
perhaps, fifty thousand francs' profit, and yet he could
not bring himself to risk the money. He used to sit in a
corner with his head in his hands, groaning and
sometimes yelling out in agony, and often he would kneel
down (he was very pious) and pray for strength, but still
he couldn't do it. But at last, more from exhaustion than
anything else, he gave in quite suddenly; he slit open the
mattress where his money was concealed and handed
over six thousand francs to the Jew.
The Jew delivered the cocaine the same day, and
promptly vanished. And meanwhile, as was not sur-
prising after the fuss Roucolle had made, the affair had
been noised all over the quarter. The very next morning