It was strange to find myself sitting down with
avidity, rising up with satisfaction, and counting the
hours that divided me from my return to such a table.
But hunger is a great magician; and so soon as I had
spent my ready cash, and could no longer fill up on
bowls of chocolate or hunks of bread, I must depend
entirely on that cabman's eating-house, and upon
certain rare, long-expected, long-remembered windfalls.
Dijon (for instance) might get paid for some of his
pot-boiling work, or else an old friend would pass
through Paris; and then I would be entertained to a
meal after my own soul, and contract a Latin Quarter
loan, which would keep me in tobacco and my morning
coffee for a fortnight. It might be thought the latter
would appear the more important. It might be supposed
that a life, led so near the confines of actual famine,
should have dulled the nicety of my palate. On the
contrary, the poorer a man's diet, the more sharply is
he set on dainties. The last of my ready cash, about
thirty francs, was deliberately squandered on a single
dinner; and a great part of my time when I was alone
was passed upon the details of imaginary feasts.
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