The rue1 du Coq d’Or, Paris, seven in the morning. A succession of furious, choking yells from the street. Madame Monce, who kept the little hotel opposite mine, had come out on to the pavement to address a lodger2 on the third floor. Her bare feet were stuck into sabots and her grey hair was streaming down.
MADAME MONCE: ‘SALOPE! SALOPE! How many times have I told you not to squash bugs3 on the wallpaper? Do you think you’ve bought the hotel, eh? Why can’t you throw them out of the window like everyone else? PUTAIN! SALOPE!’
THE WOMAN ON THE THIRD FLOOR: ‘VACHE!’
Thereupon a whole variegated4 chorus of yells, as windows were flung open on every side and half the street joined in the quarrel. They shut up abruptly5 ten minutes later, when a squadron of cavalry6 rode past and people stopped shouting to look at them.
I sketch7 this scene, just to convey something of the spirit of the rue du Coq d’Or. Not that quarrels were the only thing that happened there — but still, we seldom got through the morning without at least one outburst of this description. Quarrels, and the desolate8 cries of street hawkers, and the shouts of children chasing orange-peel over the cobbles, and at night loud singing and the sour reek9 of the refuse-carts, made up the atmosphere of the street.
It was a very narrow street — a ravine of tall, leprous houses, lurching towards one another in queer attitudes, as though they had all been frozen in the act of collapse10. All the houses were hotels and packed to the tiles with lodgers11, mostly Poles, Arabs and Italians. At the foot of the hotels were tiny BISTROs, where you could be drunk for the equivalent of a shilling. On Saturday nights about a third of the male population of the quarter was drunk. There was fighting over women, and the Arab navvies who lived in the cheapest hotels used to conduct mysterious feuds12, and fight them out with chairs and occasionally revolvers. At night the policemen would only come through the street two together. It was a fairly rackety place. And yet amid the noise and dirt lived the usual respectable French shopkeepers, bakers13 and laundresses and the like, keeping themselves to themselves and quietly piling up small fortunes. It was quite a representative Paris slum.
My hotel was called the Hotel des Trois Moineaux. It was a dark, rickety warren of five storeys, cut up by wooden partitions into forty rooms. The rooms were small arid14 inveterately15 dirty, for there was no maid, and Madame F., the PATRONNE, had no time to do any sweeping16. The walls were as thin as matchwood, and to hide the cracks they had been covered with layer after layer of pink paper, which had come loose and housed innumerable bugs. Near the ceiling long lines of bugs marched all day like columns of soldiers, and at night came down ravenously17 hungry, so that one had to get up every few hours and kill them in hecatombs. Sometimes when the bugs got too bad one used to burn sulphur and drive them into the next room; whereupon the lodger next door would retort by having his room sulphured, and drive the bugs back. It was a dirty place, but homelike, for Madame F. and her husband were good sorts. The rent of the rooms varied18 between thirty and fifty francs a week.
The lodgers were a floating population, largely foreigners, who used to turn up without luggage, stay a week and then disappear again. They were of every trade — cobblers, bricklayers, stonemasons, navvies, students, prostitutes, rag-pickers. Some of them were fantastically poor. In one of the attics19 there was a Bulgarian student who made fancy shoes for the American market. From six to twelve he sat on his bed, making a dozen pairs of shoes and earning thirty-five francs; the rest of the day he attended lectures at the Sorbonne. He was studying for the Church, and books of theology lay face-down on his leather-strewn floor. In another room lived a Russian woman and her son, who called himself an artist. The mother worked sixteen hours a day, darning socks at twenty-five centimes a sock, while the son, decently dressed, loafed in the Montparnasse cafes. One room was let to two different lodgers, one a day worker and the other a night worker. In another room a widower20 shared the same bed with his two grown-up daughters, both consumptive.
There were eccentric characters in the hotel. The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people — people who have fallen into solitary21, half-mad grooves22 of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work. Some of the lodgers in our hotel lived lives that were curious beyond words.
There were the Rougiers, for instance, an old, ragged23, dwarfish24 couple who plied25 an extraordinary trade. They used to sell postcards on the Boulevard St Michel. The curious thing was that the postcards were sold in sealed packets as pornographic ones, but were actually photographs of chateaux on the Loire; the buyers did not discover this till too late, and of course never complained. The Rougiers earned about a hundred francs a week, and by strict economy managed to be always half starved and half drunk. The filth26 of their room was such that one could smell it on the floor below. According to Madame F., neither of the Rougiers had taken off their clothes for four years.
Or there was Henri, who worked in the sewers27. He was a tall, melancholy28 man with curly hair, rather romantic-looking in his long, sewer-man’s boots. Henri’s peculiarity29 was that he did not speak, except for the purposes of work, literally30 for days together. Only a year before he had been a chauffeur31 in good employ and saving money. One day he fell in love, and when the girl refused him he lost his temper and kicked her. On being kicked the girl fell desperately32 in love with Henri, and for a fortnight they lived together and spent a thousand francs of Henri’s money. Then the girl was unfaithful; Henri planted a knife in her upper arm and was sent to prison for six months. As soon as she had been stabbed the girl fell more in love with Henri than ever, and the two made up their quarrel and agreed that when Henri came out of jail he should buy a taxi and they would marry and settle down. But a fortnight later the girl was unfaithful again, and when Henri came out she was with child, Henri did not stab her again. He drew out all his savings33 and went on a drinking-bout that ended in another month’s imprisonment34; after that he went to work in the sewers. Nothing would induce Henri to talk. If you asked him why he worked in the sewers he never answered, but simply crossed his wrists to signify handcuffs, and jerked his head southward, towards the prison. Bad luck seemed to have turned him half-witted in a single day.
Or there was R., an Englishman, who lived six months of the year in Putney with his parents and six months in France. During his time in France he drank four litres of wine a day, and six litres on Saturdays; he had once travelled as far as the Azores, because the wine there is cheaper than anywhere in Europe. He was a gentle, domesticated35 creature, never rowdy or quarrelsome, and never sober. He would lie in bed till midday, and from then till midnight he was in his comer of the BISTRO, quietly and methodically soaking. While he soaked he talked, in a refined, womanish voice, about antique furniture. Except myself, R. was the only Englishman in the quarter.
There were plenty of other people who lived lives just as eccentric as these: Monsieur Jules, the Roumanian, who had a glass eye and would not admit it, Furex the Limousin stonemason, Roucolle the miser36 — he died before my time, though — old Laurent the rag-merchant, who used to copy his signature from a slip of paper he carried in his pocket. It would be fun to write some of their biographies, if one had time. I am trying to describe the people in our quarter, not for the mere37 curiosity, but because they are all part of the story. Poverty is what I am writing about, and I had my first contact with poverty in this slum. The slum, with its dirt and its queer lives, was first an object-lesson in poverty, and then the background of my own experiences. It is for that reason that I try to give some idea of what life was like there.
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rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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lodger
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| n.寄宿人，房客 | |
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bugs
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| adj.疯狂的，发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 )；病菌；虫子；[计算机]（制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的）错误 | |
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variegated
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| adj.斑驳的，杂色的 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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reek
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| v.发出臭气；n.恶臭 | |
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collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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lodgers
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| n.房客，租住者( lodger的名词复数 ) | |
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feuds
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| n.长期不和，世仇( feud的名词复数 ) | |
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bakers
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| n.面包师( baker的名词复数 )；面包店；面包店店主；十三 | |
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arid
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| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
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inveterately
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| adv.根深蒂固地，积习地 | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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ravenously
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| adv.大嚼地，饥饿地 | |
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varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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attics
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| n. 阁楼 | |
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widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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grooves
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| n.沟( groove的名词复数 )；槽；老一套；（某种）音乐节奏v.沟( groove的第三人称单数 )；槽；老一套；（某种）音乐节奏 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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dwarfish
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| a.像侏儒的，矮小的 | |
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plied
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| v.使用（工具）( ply的过去式和过去分词 )；经常供应（食物、饮料）；固定往来；经营生意 | |
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filth
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| n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥 | |
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sewers
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| n.阴沟，污水管，下水道( sewer的名词复数 ) | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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peculiarity
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| n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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chauffeur
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| n.(受雇于私人或公司的)司机；v.为…开车 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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savings
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| n.存款，储蓄 | |
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imprisonment
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| n.关押，监禁，坐牢 | |
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domesticated
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| adj.喜欢家庭生活的；（指动物）被驯养了的v.驯化( domesticate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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miser
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| n.守财奴，吝啬鬼 (adj.miserly) | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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