---
title: "Down and Out in Paris and London"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 19 of 38
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/19/
cite: "George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, section 19. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/19/"
---

# 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]

## 19. Chapter XIX

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/19/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-down-and-out-fp20180314/19/#p-N

[¶0] 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.

[¶1] 'Free at last, _mon ami_! You can give notice in the morning. The
Auberge opens tomorrow.'

[¶2] 'Tomorrow?'

[¶3] 'Well, possibly we shall need a day or two to arrange things. But, at
any rate, no more _cafeterie! Nous voilà lancés, mon ami!_ My tail coat
is out of pawn already.'

[¶4] 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.

[¶5] At ten I managed to get Boris out of bed, and we unlocked 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 restaurant 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.

[¶6] 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_!'

[¶7] We needed patience, for days passed and the restaurant 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.

[¶8] 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 spectacles, 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.

[¶9] As each day went by Jules grew more and more enraged 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:

[¶10] '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 I have vomited—yes,
vomited with rage.

[¶11] 'Besides, _mon vieux_, don't forget that I'm a Communist. _À bas les
bourgeois!_ Did any man alive ever see me working when I could avoid it?
No. And not only I don't wear myself out working, like you other fools,
but I steal, just to show my independence. Once I was in a restaurant
where the _patron_ thought he could treat me like a dog. Well, in
revenge I found out a way to steal milk from the milk-cans and seal them
up again so that no one should know. I tell you, I just swilled that
milk down night and morning. Every day I drank four litres of milk,
besides half a litre of cream. The _patron_ was at his wits' end to know
where the milk was going. It wasn't that I wanted milk, you understand,
because I hate the stuff; it was principle, just principle.

[¶12] 'Well, after three days I began to get dreadful pains in my belly, and I
went to the doctor. "What have you been eating?" he said. I said: "I
drink four litres of milk a day, and half a litre of cream." "Four
litres!" he said. "Then stop it at once. You'll burst if you go on."
"What do I care?" I said. "With me principle is everything. I shall go
on drinking that milk, even if I do burst."

[¶13] 'Well, the next day the _patron_ caught me stealing milk. "You're
sacked," he said; "you leave at the end of the week." "_Pardon,
monsieur_," I said, "I shall leave this morning." "No, you won't," he
said, "I can't spare you till Saturday." "Very well, _mon patron_," I
thought to myself, "we'll see who gets tired of it first." And then I
set to work to smash the crockery. I broke nine plates the first day and
thirteen the second; after that the _patron_ was glad to see the last of
me.

[¶14] 'Ah, I'm not one of your Russian _moujiks_ . . .'

[¶15] Ten days passed. It was a bad time. I was absolutely at the end of my
money, and my rent was several days overdue. We loafed about the dismal
empty restaurant, too hungry even to get on with the work that remained.
Only Boris now believed that the restaurant would open. He had set his
heart on being _maître d'hôtel_, and he invented a theory that the
_patron_'s money was tied up in shares and he was waiting a favourable
moment for selling. On the tenth day I had nothing to eat or smoke, and
I told the _patron_ that I could not continue working without an advance
on my wages. As blandly as usual, the _patron_ promised the advance, and
then, according to his custom, vanished. I walked part of the way home,
but I did not feel equal to a scene with Madame F. over the rent, so I
passed the night on a bench on the boulevard. It was very
uncomfortable—the arm of the seat cuts into your back—and much colder
than I had expected. There was plenty of time, in the long boring hours
between dawn and work, to think what a fool I had been to deliver myself
into the hands of these Russians.

[¶16] Then, in the morning, the luck changed. Evidently the _patron_ had come
to an understanding with his creditors, for he arrived with money in his
pockets, set the alterations going, and gave me my advance. Boris and I
bought macaroni and a piece of horse's liver, and had our first hot meal
in ten days.

[¶17] The workmen were brought in and the alterations made, hastily and with
incredible shoddiness. The tables, for instance, were to be covered with
baize, but when the _patron_ found that baize was expensive he bought
instead disused army blankets, smelling incorrigibly of sweat. The
table-cloths (they were check, to go with the 'Norman' decorations)
would cover them, of course. On the last night we were at work till two
in the morning, getting things ready. The crockery did not arrive till
eight, and, being new, had all to be washed. The cutlery did not arrive
till the next morning, nor the linen either, so that we had to dry the
crockery with a shirt of the _patron_'s and an old pillowslip belonging
to the concierge. Boris and I did all the work. Jules was skulking, and
the _patron_ and his wife sat in the bar with a dun and some Russian
friends, drinking success to the restaurant. The cook was in the kitchen
with her head on the table, crying, because she was expected to cook for
fifty people, and there were not pots and pans enough for ten. About
midnight there was a fearful interview with some duns, who came
intending to seize eight copper saucepans which the _patron_ had
obtained on credit. They were bought off with half a bottle of brandy.

[¶18] Jules and I missed the last Metro home and had to sleep on the floor of
the restaurant. The first thing we saw in the morning were two large
rats sitting on the kitchen table, eating from a ham that stood there.
It seemed a bad omen, and I was surer than ever that the Auberge de
Jehan Cottard would turn out a failure.