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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 half-pennyworth of fried potatoes; thus spending in all threepence-halfpenny. Cornichon spends the same sum generally in another way. Friponnet is more extravagant.
Cornichon has also a cupboard there in which he stores his wood for winter, paying twenty-pence per hundred pounds 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.
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 Chabannais; have soup at a penny a portion, small plates of meat at twopence each, dessert at a penny, and halfpenny slips of bread.
Now, however, as before, twelve or thirteen hours are regarded as a fair day’s work. I and Friponnet, who are diamond jewellers, work ten hours only. My friend Cornichon, who is a goldsmith, works as long as a painter or a smith. Sunday labour used to be very general in France, but extended seldom beyond the half day; which was paid for at a higher rate.
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