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"For two cents," he declared savagely, as if Brock were to blame, "I'd take the next train for Paris." Brock watched him down the hall. He drew a handful of small coins from his pocket, ruefully looking them over. "Two cents," he said. "Hang it all, I've nothing here but pfennigs and hellers and centimes." In the course of his wanderings the disconsolate Freddie came upon Mrs.
"And now," said she, "I am his wife, whom he bought with his soul's welfare. And what should I do? If I went to him myself and offered to buy it, he would refuse. But if you go, he will sell it eagerly; I will await you here; you will buy it for four centimes, and I will buy it again for three. And the Lord strengthen a poor girl!"
Labor cost little; forty-five francs a month for the men from the oasis, fifty centimes a day for those who came from Bokhara. It was in this way that Skobeleff's soldiers were taken to Kizil Arvat, and then eighty-four miles beyond to Gheok Tepe.
There was a cabin there the spot is called the Caillet and a spring of ice-cold water. On the door of the cabin was a sign, in French, to the effect that "One may here see a living chamois for fifty centimes." We did not invest; what we wanted was to see a dead one.
All the while I was there, the guest of the French nation by the payment of fifty centimes gate-money, I was obscurely resenting its retention of a place which Bonaparte bestowed upon the First Republic with so much other loot from Italy.
"If you meant falsely," said the old man, "I think God would strike you dead." "He would!" cried Kokua. "Be sure He would. I could not be so treacherous God would not suffer it." "Give me the four centimes and await me here," said the old man. Now, when Kokua stood alone in the street her spirit died.
And so at last we all had dolls, and La Mamma, poor soul! spent thirty-six centimes! It seemed a mortal sin to her; and she has told me many a time how she lay awake that night and cried, and prayed to God and the saints to forgive her for that wicked extravagance. And yet she could not but feel glad to see how happy we all were with our dolls.
Cibot became their housekeeper at the rate of twenty-five francs per month twelve francs fifty centimes for each of them. Before the year was out, the emeritus portress reigned in the establishment of the two old bachelors, as she reigned everywhere in the house belonging to M. Pillerault, great uncle of Mme. le Comtesse Popinot. Their business was her business; she called them "my gentlemen."
After this they took a stroll up and down the street, and were bored, and went into the estaminet again, and ordered five more glasses of porto. It was then the trouble began. But it was not the Australian who began it. It was the woman behind the bar. She served five glasses more of porto and asked for thirty centimes each. "Twenty centimes," said the Australian. "Vingt, Madame." "Mais non!
Those among them who have money take their pleasure simply and with the least expense of physical energy. Those who have not money do the same thing. This basis of existence is calm and unexaggerated; life is reckoned by centimes, not by dollars. What an ideal place is Venice!
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