‘I never used to be a waster,’ he said. ‘I suppose one doesn’t improve as one grows old.’

Sometimes he severely blamed himself for his misconduct and his laziness:

‘Crainquebille, old chap, you ain’t good for anything but liftin’ your glass.’

Sometimes he deceived himself and made out that he needed the drink.

‘I must have it now and then; I must have a drop to strengthen me and cheer me up. It seems as if I had a fire in my inside; and there’s nothing like the drink for quenching it.’

It often happened that he missed the auction in the morning and so had to provide himself with damaged fruit and vegetables on credit. One day, feeling tired and discouraged, he left his barrow in its shed, and spent the livelong day hanging round the stall of Madame Rose, the tripe-seller, or lounging in and out of the wine-shops near the market. In the evening, sitting on a basket, he meditated and became conscious of his deterioration. He recalled the strength of his early years: the achievements of former days, the arduous labours and the glad evenings: those days quickly passing, all alike and fully occupied; the pacing in the darkness up and down the market pavement, waiting for the early auction; the vegetables carried in armfuls and artistically arranged in the barrow; the piping hot back coffee of Mère Théodore swallowed standing, and at one gulp; the shafts grasped vigorously; and then the loud cry, piercing as cock crow, rending the morning air as he passed through the crowded streets. All that innocent, rough life of the human pack-house came before him. For half a century on his travelling stall, he had borne to townsfolk worn with care and vigil the fresh harvest of kitchen gardens. Shaking his head he sighed:

‘No! I’m not what I was. I’m done for. The pitcher goes so often to the well that at last it comes home broken. And then I’ve never been the same since my affair with the magistrates. No, I’m not the man I was.’

In short he was demoralized. And when a man reaches that condition he might as well be on the ground and unable to rise. All the passers-by tread him under foot.

VIII. The Final Result

Poverty came, black poverty. The old costermonger who used to come back from the Faubourg Montmartre with a bag full of five-franc pieces, had not a single coin now. Winter came. Driven out of his garret, he slept under the carts in a shed. It had been raining for days; the gutters were overflowing, and the shed was flooded.

Crouching in his barrow, over the pestilent water, in the company of spiders, rats and half-starved cats, he was meditating in the gloom. Having eaten nothing all day and no longer having the chestnut-seller’s sacks for a covering, he recalled the fortnight when the Government had provided him with food and clothing. He envied the prisoners’ fate. They suffer neither cold nor hunger, and an idea occurred to him:

‘Since I know the trick why don’t I use it?’

He rose and went out into the street. It was a little past eleven. The night was dark and chill. A drizzling mist was falling, colder and more penetrating than rain. The few passers-by crept along under cover of the houses.

Crainquebille went past the Church of Saint-Eustache and turned into the Rue Montmartre. It was deserted. A guardian of the peace stood on the pavement, by the apse of the church. He was under a gas-lamp, and all around fell a fine rain looking reddish in the gaslight. It fell on to the policeman’s hood. He looked chilled to the bone; but, either because he preferred to be in the light or because he was tired of walking he stayed under the lamp, and perhaps it seemed to him a friend, a companion. In the loneliness of