bread. Those who make crowns of
immortelles to hang upon the tombs, earn only
about sevenpence-halfpenny a day. That
trade is, in very truth, funereal. To come
back to ourselves, it should be said that
our wages, as a whole, have risen rather
than declined during the last quarter of a
century. It is a curious fact, however, that
the pay for job-work has decreased very
decidedly.

And how do we live? it is asked. Well
enough. All of us eat two meals a day; but
what we eat depends upon our money. We
three, who draw up this account, work in one
room. We begin fasting, and maintain our
fast until eleven o'clock. Then we send the
apprentice out to fetch our breakfasts. When
he comes back with his stores, he disposes
them neatly on a centre table in little groups.
I generally have a pennyworth of ham, which
certainly is tough, but very full of flavour;
bread to the same value; a half share with
Friponnet in two-pennyworth of wine, and a
halfpennyworth of fried potatoes; thus spending
in all threepence-halfpenny. Cornichon
spends the same sum generally in another
way. He has a pennyworth of cold boiled
(unsalted) beef, a pennyworth of bread, a
halfpennyworth of cheese and a pennyworth of
currant jam. Friponnet is more extravagant.
A common breakfast bill of fare with him is
two penny sausages, twopennyworth of
bread, a pennyworth of wine, a halfpenny
paquet de couënne (which is a little parcel of
crisply fried strips of bacon rind), and a baked
pear. All this is sumptuous; for we are of
the aristocracy of workmen. The labourers
of Paris do not live so well. They go to the
gargottes, where they get threepence halfpenny
worth of bouilli—soup, beef and vegetable
  —which includes the title to a liberal supply
of bread. Reeking dingy dens are those
gargottes, where all the poorer classes of
Parisian workmen save the beef out of their
breakfast bouilli, and carry it away to eat
later in the day at the wine-shop; where it
will make a dinner with more bread and a
pennyworth of wine. Of bread they eat a
great deal; and, reckoning that at fourpence
and the wine at a penny, we find eightpence
to be the daily cost of living to the great body
of Parisian workmen.

We aristos among workpeople dine
famously. My own practice is to dine in
the street du Petit Carré upon dinners for
ninepence; or by taking dinner tickets for
fourteen days in advance, I get one dinner a
fortnight given me gratuitously. I dine upon
soup, a choice of three plates of meat, about
half-a-pint of wine, a dessert and bread at
discretion. Our dinner hour is four o'clock,
and we are not likely to eat anything more
before bedtime; although one of us may win
a cup of coffee or a dram of brandy at
billiards or dominoes in the evening.
Cornichon and Friponnet dine in the street
Chabonnais; have soup at a penny a portion,
small plates of meat at twopence each, dessert
at a penny, and halfpenny slips of bread.
Each of us when he has dined rolls up a
cigarette, and lounges perhaps round the
Palais Royal for half an hour.

As for our lodging the poorest of us live by
tens in one room, and sleep by fours and fives
upon one mattress; paying from twopence to
tenpence a night. The ordinary cost of such
lodging as the workman in Paris occupies is,
for a whole room for one person, nine or ten
shillings a month; for more than one, six or
seven shillings each; and, for half a bed, four
shillings. Cornichon lives in room number
thirty-six on the third floor of a furnished
lodging house in the street du Petit Lion. You
must ring for the porter if you would go in to
Cornichon; and the porter must, by a jerk at
a string, unlatch the street door if Cornichon
wishes to come out to you. In a little court
at the back are two flights of dirty stairs
of red tile edged with wood. They lead to
distinct portions of the house. Cornichon's
room is paved with red tiles, polished now
and then with beeswax. It is furnished with
the bed and a few inches of bedside carpet
forming a small island on the floor, with two
chairs, a commode with a black marble top,
a washing-basin and a water bottle. Cornichon
has also a cupboard there in which he
stores his wood for winter, paying twentypence
per hundred pound for logs; and as
the room contains no grate, he rents a German
stove from his landlord, paying four-
and-two-pence for his use of it during the
season.

Friponnet rents two unfurnished rooms up
four pair of stairs, at the back of a house in
the street d'Argenteuil. He pays ten shillings
a month. They are furnished in mahogany
and black marble bought of a broker, and
I think not paid for yet. Fidette visits him
there. She is a gold and silver polisher, his
bonne amie. She has her own lodging; but
she and Friponnet divide their earnings.
They belong to one another; although no
priest has blessed their voluntary contract.
It is so, I am pained to say, with very many
of us.

I have a half bed in a little street, with a
man who is a good fellow considering he is
a square head—a German. The red tiles of
my staircase are very clean, and slippery
with beeswax. My landlord rents a portion
of the third floor of the house, and underlets
it fearfully. One apartment has been penned
off into four, and mine is the fourth section
at the end. To reach me one must pass
through the first pen, which is occupied by
Monsieur and Madame. There they work,
eat, and sleep; as for Madame, she never
leaves it. Monsieur only goes away to wait
upon the griffe, his master, when he wants
more work; his griffe is a slop tailor.
Monsieur and Madame sleep in a recess, which
looks like a sarcophagus. A little Italian
tailor also sleeps in the same pen; but