<P> A French translation, which Orwell admired, by RN Raimbault and Gwen Gilbert, entitled La Vache Enragée, was published by Éditions Gallimard, on 2 May 1935, with a preface by Panait Istrati and an introduction by Orwell . </P> <P> The scene - setting opening chapters describe the atmosphere in the Paris quarter and introduce various characters who appear later in the book . From Chapter III to Chapter X, where the narrator obtains a job at "Hotel X," he describes his descent into poverty, often in tragi - comic terms . An Italian compositor forges room keys and steals his savings and his scant income vanishes when the English lessons he is giving stop . He begins at first to sell some of his clothes, and then to pawn his remaining clothes, and then searches for work with a Russian waiter named Boris--work as a porter at Les Halles, work as an English teacher and restaurant work . He recounts his two - day experience without any food and tells of meeting Russian "Communists" who, he later concludes, on their disappearance, must be mere swindlers . </P> <P> After the various ordeals of unemployment and hunger the narrator obtains a job as a plongeur (dishwasher) in the "Hôtel X" near the Place de la Concorde, and begins to work long hours there . In Chapter XIII, he describes the "caste system" of the hotel--"manager - cooks - waiters - plongeurs"--and, in Chapter XIV, its frantic and seemingly chaotic workings . He notes also "the dirt in the Hôtel X.," which became apparent "as soon as one penetrated into the service quarters ." He talks of his routine life among the working poor of Paris, slaving and sleeping, and then drinking on Saturday night through the early hours of Sunday morning . In Chapter XVI, he refers briefly to a murder committed "just beneath my window (while he was sleeping...The thing that strikes me in looking back," he says, "is that I was in bed and asleep within three minutes of the murder (...) We were working people, and where was the sense of wasting sleep over a murder?" </P> <P> Misled by Boris's optimism, the narrator is briefly penniless again after he and Boris quit their hotel jobs in the expectation of work at a new restaurant, the "Auberge de Jehan Cottard," where Boris feels sure he will become a waiter again; at the Hotel X, he had been doing lower - grade work . The "patron" of the Auberge, "an ex-colonel of the Russian Army," seems to have financial difficulties . The narrator is not paid for ten days and is compelled to spend a night on a bench--"It was very uncomfortable--the arm of the seat cuts into your back--and much colder than I had expected"--rather than face his landlady over the outstanding rent . </P>

Down and out in paris and london quotes