George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London

and then a thin old crow of a woman in a black dress

put her nose out and regarded me suspiciously before

letting me in. It was very dark inside: I could see

nothing except a flaring gas jet that illuminated a patch

of plaster wall, throwing everything else into

deeper shadow. There was a smell of rats and dust.

Without speaking, the old woman lighted a candle at the

gas jet, then hobbled in front of me down a stone

passage to the top of a flight of stone steps.

" '

Voilà !' she said; 'go down into the cellar there and

do what you like. I shall see nothing, hear nothing, know

nothing. You are free, you understand-perfectly free.'

"Ha,

messieurs , need I describe to you

forcément , you

know it yourselves-that shiver, half of terror and half of

joy, that goes through one at these moments? I crept

down, feeling my way; I could hear my breathing and the

scraping of my shoes on the stones, otherwise all was

silence. At the bottom of the stairs my hand met an

electric switch. I turned it, and a great electrolier of

twelve redglobes flooded the cellarwith a red light. And

behold, I was not in a cellar, but in a bedroom, a great,

rich, garish bedroom, coloured blood red from top to

bottom. Figure it to yourselves,

messieurs et dames ! Red

carpet on the floor, red paper on the walls, red plush on

the chairs, even the ceiling red; everywhere red, burning

into the eyes. It was a heavy, stifling red, as though the

light were shining through bowls of blood. At the far end

stood a huge, square bed, with quilts red like the rest,

and on it a girl was lying, dressed in a frock of red velvet.

At the sight of me she shrank away and tried to hide her

knees under the short dress.

"I had halted by the door. 'Come here, my chicken,' I

called to her.

"She gave a whimper of fright. With a bound I was

beside the bed; she tried to elude me, but I seized her by

the throat-like this, do you see?-tight! She struggled, she

began to cry out for mercy, but I held her fast, forcing

back her head and staring down into her face. She was

twenty years old, perhaps; her face was the

broad, dull face of a stupid child, but it was coated

with paint and powder, and her blue, stupid eyes,

shining in the red light, wore that shocked, distorted

look that one sees nowhere save in the eyes of these

women. She was some peasant girl, doubtless, whom

her parents had sold into slavery.

"Without another word I pulled her off the bed and

threw her on to the floor. And then I fell upon her like

a tiger! Ah, the joy, the incomparable rapture of that

time! There,

messieurs et dames , is what I would expound to

you;

voilà (amour ! There is the true love, there is the only

thing in the world worth striving for; there is the thing

beside which all your arts and ideals, all your

philosophies and creeds, all your fine words and high

attitudes, are as pale and profitless as ashes. When

one has experienced love-the true love-what is there in

the world that seems more than a mere ghost of joy?

"More and more savagely I renewed the attack.

Again and again the girl tried to escape; she cried out

for mercy anew, but I laughed at her.

" 'Mercy!' I said, 'do you suppose I have come here

to show mercy? Do you suppose I have paid a

thousand francs for that?' I swear to you, messieurs et

dames, that if it were not for that accursed law that robs

us of our liberty, I would have murdered her at that

moment.

« Ah, how she screamed, with what bitter cries of

agony. But there was no one to hear them; down there

under the streets of Paris we were as secure as at the

heart of a pyramid. Tears streamed down the girl's

face, washing away the powder in long, dirty smears.

Ah, that irrecoverable time! You,

messieurs et dames , you

who have not cultivated the finer sensibilities of love,

for you such pleasure is almost beyond conception.

And I too, now that my youth is gone-ah, youth!-

shall never again see life so beautiful as that. It

is finished.

« Ah yes, it is gone-gone for ever. Ah, the poverty,

the shortness, the disappointment of human joy! For

in reality-car

en réalité , what is the duration of the

supreme moment of love? It is nothing, an instant, a

second perhaps. A second of ecstasy, and after that-

dust, ashes, nothingness.

"And so, just for one instant, I captured the

supreme happiness, the highest and most refined

emotion to which human beings can attain. And in the

same moment it was finished, and I was left-to what?

All my savagery, my passion, were scattered like the

petals of a rose. I was left cold and languid, full. of

vain regrets; in my revulsion I even felt a kind of pity

for the weeping girl on the floor. Is it not nauseous,

that we should be the prey of such mean emotions? I

did not look at the girl again; my sole thought was to

get away. I hastened up the steps of the vault and out

into the street. It was dark and bitterly cold, the

streets were empty, the stones echoed under my heels

with a hollow, lonely ring. All my money was gone, I

had not even the price of a taxi fare. I walked back

alone to my cold, solitary room.

"But there,

messieurs et dames , that is what I promised

to expound to you. That is Love. That was the happiest

day of my life."

He was a curious specimen, Charlie. I describe

him, just to show what diverse characters could be

found flourishing in the Coq d'Or quarter.

III

I

L I V E D in the Coq d'Or quarter for about a year

and a half. One day, in summer, I found that I had just

four hundred and fifty francs left, and beyond this

nothing but thirty-six francs a week, which I earned by giving

English lessons. Hitherto I had not thought about the

future, but I now realised that I must do something at

once. I decided to start looking for a job, and-very

luckily, as it turned out-I took the precaution of paying

two hundred francs for a month's rent in advance. With

the other two hundred and fifty francs, besides the

English lessons, I could live a month, and in a month I

should probably find work. I aimed at becoming a guide

to one of the tourist companies, or perhaps an

interpreter. However, a piece of bad luck prevented this.

One day there turned up at the hotel a young Italian

who called himself a compositor. He was rather an am-

biguous person, for he wore side whiskers, which are

the mark either of an apache or an intellectual, and

nobody was quite certain in which class to put him.

Madame F. did not like the look of him, and made him

pay a week's rent in advance. The Italian paid the rent

and stayed six nights at the hotel. During this time he

managed to prepare some duplicate keys, and on the last

night he robbed a dozen rooms, including mine. Luckily,

he did not find the money that was in my pockets, so I

was not left penniless. I was left with just forty-seven

francs-that is, seven and tenpence.

This put an end to my plans of looking for work. I

had now got to live at the rate of about six francs a day,

and from the start it was too difficult to leave much

thought for anything else. It was now that my experi-

ences of poverty began-for six francs a day, if not actual