---
title: "Down and Out in Paris and London"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 16 of 38
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/16/
cite: "George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, section 16. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/16/"
---

# Down and Out in Paris and London

*George Orwell*

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> Title: Down and Out in Paris and London
Date of first publication: 1933
Author: George Orwell (1903-1950)
Date first posted: Mar. 14, 2018
Date last updated: Mar. 14, 2018
Faded Page eBook #20180314

> This eBook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Howard Ross
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

> GEORGE ORWELL

> _Down and Out_
    _in Paris and London_

> O scathful harm, condicion of poverte!
       CHAUCER

> PENGUIN BOOKS

> First published by Victor Gollancz 1933

> Copyright 1933 by Eric Blair

> [The end of _Down and Out in Paris and London_ by George Orwell]

## 16. Chapter XVI

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/16/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/16/#p-N

[¶0] Time went on and the Auberge de Jehan Cottart showed no signs of
opening. Boris and I went down there one day during our afternoon
interval and found that none of the alterations had been done, except
the indecent pictures, and there were three duns instead of two. The
_patron_ greeted us with his usual blandness, and the next instant
turned to me (his prospective dishwasher) and borrowed five francs.
After that I felt certain that the restaurant would never get beyond
talk. The _patron_, however, again named the opening for 'exactly a
fortnight from today', and introduced us to the woman who was to do the
cooking, a Baltic Russian five feet tall and a yard across the hips. She
told us that she had been a singer before she came down to cooking, and
that she was very artistic and adored English literature, especially _La
Case de l'Oncle Tom_.

[¶1] In a fortnight I had got so used to the routine of a _plongeur_'s life
that I could hardly imagine anything different. It was a life without
much variation. At a quarter to six one woke with a sudden start,
tumbled into grease-stiffened clothes, and hurried out with dirty face
and protesting muscles. It was dawn, and the windows were dark except
for the workmen's cafés. The sky was like a vast flat wall of cobalt,
with roofs and spires of black paper pasted upon it. Drowsy men were
sweeping the pavements with ten-foot besoms, and ragged families picking
over the dustbins. Workmen, and girls with a piece of chocolate in one
hand and a _croissant_ in the other, were pouring into the Metro
stations. Trams, filled with more workmen, boomed gloomily past. One
hastened down to the station, fought for a place—one does literally
have to fight on the Paris Metro at six in the morning—and stood jammed
in the swaying mass of passengers, nose to nose with some hideous French
face, breathing sour wine and garlic. And then one descended into the
labyrinth of the hotel basement, and forgot daylight till two o'clock,
when the sun was hot and the town black with people and cars.

[¶2] After my first week at the hotel I always spent the afternoon interval
in sleeping, or, when I had money, in a _bistro_. Except for a few
ambitious waiters who went to English classes, the whole staff wasted
their leisure in this way; one seemed too lazy after the morning's work
to do anything better. Sometimes half a dozen _plongeurs_ would make up
a party and go to an abominable brothel in the Rue de Sieyès, where the
charge was only five francs twenty-five centimes—tenpence halfpenny. It
was nick-named '_le prix fixe_', and they used to describe their
experiences there as a great joke. It was a favourite rendezvous of
hotel workers. The _plongeurs_' wages did not allow them to marry, and
no doubt work in the basement does not encourage fastidious feelings.

[¶3] For another four hours one was in the cellars, and then one emerged,
sweating, into the cool street. It was lamplight—that strange purplish
gleam of the Paris lamps—and beyond the river the Eiffel Tower flashed
from top to bottom with zigzag skysigns, like enormous snakes of fire.
Streams of cars glided silently to and fro, and women, exquisite-looking
in the dim light, strolled up and down the arcade. Sometimes a woman
would glance at Boris or me, and then, noticing our greasy clothes, look
hastily away again. One fought another battle in the Metro and was home
by ten. Generally from ten to midnight I went to a little _bistro_ in
our street, an underground place frequented by Arab navvies. It was a
bad place for fights, and I sometimes saw bottles thrown, once with
fearful effect, but as a rule the Arabs fought among themselves and let
Christians alone. _Raki_, the Arab drink, was very cheap, and the
_bistro_ was open at all hours, for the Arabs—lucky men—had the power
of working all day and drinking all night.

[¶4] It was the typical life of a _plongeur_, and it did not seem a bad life
at the time. I had no sensation of poverty, for even after paying my
rent and setting aside enough for tobacco and journeys and my food on
Sundays, I still had four francs a day for drinks, and four francs was
wealth. There was—it is hard to express it—a sort of heavy
contentment, the contentment a well-fed beast might feel, in a life
which had become so simple. For nothing could be simpler than the life
of a _plongeur_. He lives in a rhythm between work and sleep, without
time to think, hardly conscious of the exterior world; his Paris has
shrunk to the hotel, the Metro, a few _bistros_ and his bed. If he goes
afield, it is only a few streets away, on a trip with some servant-girl
who sits on his knee swallowing oysters and beer. On his free day he
lies in bed till noon, puts on a clean shirt, throws dice for drinks,
and after lunch goes back to bed again. Nothing is quite real to him but
the _boulot_, drinks and sleep; and of these sleep is the most
important.

[¶5] One night, in the small hours, there was a murder just beneath my
window. I was woken by a fearful uproar, and, going to the window, saw a
man lying flat on the stones below; I could see the murderers, three of
them, flitting away at the end of the street. Some of us went down and
found that the man was quite dead, his skull cracked with a piece of
lead piping. I remember the colour of his blood, curiously purple, like
wine; it was still on the cobbles when I came home that evening, and
they said the schoolchildren had come from miles round to see it. But
the thing that strikes me in looking back is that I was in bed and
asleep within three minutes of the murder. So were most of the people in
the street; we just made sure that the man was done for, and went
straight back to bed. We were working people, and where was the sense of
wasting sleep over a murder?

[¶6] Work in the hotel taught me the true value of sleep, just as being
hungry had taught me the true value of food. Sleep had ceased to be a
mere physical necessity; it was something voluptuous, a debauch more
than a relief. I had no more trouble with the bugs. Mario had told me of
a sure remedy for them, namely pepper, strewed thick over the
bedclothes. It made me sneeze, but the bugs all hated it, and emigrated
to other rooms.