Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell Read Free Book Online

suitcase in lieu of rent, curse him! We have got to
    make a vigorous move.’
    ‘All right. But what can we do? It seems to me that the
    only thing is to pawn our overcoats and get some food.’
    ‘We’ll do that, of course, but I must get my possessions
    out of this house first. To think of my photographs being
    seized! Well, my plan is ready. I’m going to forestall the Jew
    and shoot the moon myself. F—— LE CAMP—retreat, you
    understand. I think that is the correct move, eh?’
    ‘But, my dear Boris, how can you, in daytime? You’re
    bound to be caught.’
    ‘Ah well, it will need strategy, of course. Our PATRON
    is on the watch for people slipping out without paying their
    rent; he’s been had that way before. He and his wife take it in
    turns all day to sit in the office— what misers, these French-
    men! But I have thought of a way to do it, if you will help.’
    I did not feel in a very helpful mood, but I asked Boris
    what his plan was. He explained it carefully.
    ‘Now listen. We must start by pawning our overcoats.
    First go back to your room and fetch your overcoat, then
    come back here and fetch mine, and smuggle it out under
    cover of yours. Take them to the pawnshop in the rue des

    Down and Out in Paris and London
    Francs Bourgeois. You ought to get twenty francs for the
    two, with luck. Then go down to the Seine bank and fill your
    pockets with stones, and bring them back and put them in
    my suitcase. You see the idea? I shall wrap as many of my
    things as I can carry in a newspaper, and go down and ask
    the PATRON the way to the nearest laundry. I shall be very
    brazen and casual, you understand, and of course the PA-
    TRON will think the bundle is nothing but dirty linen.
    Or, if he does suspect anything, he will do what he always
    does, the mean sneak; he will go up to my room and feel
    the weight of my suitcase. And when he feels the weight of
    stones he will think it is still full. Strategy, eh? Then after-
    wards I can come back and carry my other things out in my
    pockets.’
    ‘But what about the suitcase?’
    ‘Oh, that? We shall have to abandon it. The miserable
    thing only cost about twenty francs. Besides, one always
    abandons something in a retreat. Look at Napoleon at the
    Beresina! He abandoned his whole army.’
    Boris was so pleased with this scheme (he called it UNE
    RUSE DE GUERRE) that he almost forgot being hungry. Its
    main weakness—that he would have nowhere to sleep after
    shooting the moon—he ignored.
    At first the RUSE DE GUERRE worked well. I went home
    and fetched my overcoat (that made already nine kilometres,
    on an empty belly) and smuggled Boris’s coat out success-
    fully. Then a hitch occurred. The receiver at the pawnshop,
    a nasty, sour-faced, interfering, little man—a typical French
    official—refused the coats on the ground that they were not
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    wrapped up in anything. He said that they must be put ei-
    ther in a valise or a cardboard box. This spoiled everything,
    for we had no box of any kind, and with only twenty-five
    centimes between us we could not buy one.
    I went back and told Boris the bad news. ‘MERDE!’ he
    said, ‘that makes it awkward. Well, no matter, there is al-
    ways a way. We’ll put the overcoats in my suitcase.’
    ‘But how are we to get the suitcase past the PATRON?
    He’s sitting almost in the door of the office. It’s impossible!’
    ‘How easily you despair, MON AMI! Where is that Eng-
    lish obstinacy that I have read of? Courage! We’ll manage
    it.’ Boris thought for a little while, and then produced an-
    other cunning plan. The essential difficulty was to hold
    the PATRON’s attention for perhaps five seconds, while we
    could slip past with the suitcase. But, as it happened, the
    PATRON had just one weak spot—that he was interested
    in LE SPORT, and was ready to talk if you approached him
    on this subject. Boris read an article about bicycle races in
    an old copy of the PETIT