r sous, according as eggs
were dear or cheap. At six o'clock in the evening he descended the
Rue Saint-Jacques to dine at Rousseau's, opposite Basset's, the
stamp-dealer's, on the corner of the Rue des Mathurins. He ate no soup.
He took a six-sou plate of meat, a half-portion of vegetables for three
sous, and a three-sou dessert. For three sous he got as much bread as
he wished. As for wine, he drank water. When he paid at the desk
where Madam Rousseau, at that period still plump and rosy majestically
presided, he gave a sou to the waiter, and Madam Rousseau gave him a
smile. Then he went away. For sixteen sous he had a smile and a dinner.

This Restaurant Rousseau, where so few bottles and so many water carafes
were emptied, was a calming potion rather than a restaurant. It no
longer exists. The proprietor had a fine nickname: he was called
Rousseau the Aquatic.

Thus, breakfast four sous, dinner sixteen sous; his food cost him twenty
sous a day; which made three hundred and sixty-five francs a year. Add
the thirty francs for rent, and the thirty-six francs to the old woman,
plus a few trifling expenses; for four hundred and fifty francs, Marius
was fed, lodged, and waited on. His clothing cost him a hundred francs,
his linen fifty francs, his washing fifty francs; the whole did not
exceed six hundred and fifty francs. He was rich. He sometimes lent ten
francs to a friend. Courfeyrac had once been able to borrow sixty francs
of him. As far as fire was concerned, as Marius had no fireplace, he had
"simplified matters."

Marius always had two complete suits of clothes, the one old, "for every
day"; the other, brand new for special occasions. Both were black. He
had but three shirts, one on his person, the second in the commode, and
the third in the washerwoman's hands. He renewed them as they wore out.
They were always ragged, which caused him to button his coat to the
chin.

It had required years for Marius to attain to this flourishing
condition. Hard years; difficult, some of them, to traverse, others to
climb. Marius had not failed for a single day. He had endured everything
in the way of destitution; he had done everything except contract debts.
He did himself the justice to say that he had never owed any one a sou.
A debt was, to him, the beginning of slavery. He even said to himself,
that a creditor is worse than a master; for the master possesses only
your person, a creditor possesses your dignity and can adm