e least bread. Those who make
crowns of _immortelles_ to hang upon the tombs, only earn about
sevenpence-halfpenny a day. That trade is, in very truth, funereal. To
come back to ourselves, it should be said that our wages, as a whole,
have risen rather than declined during the last quarter of a century. It
is a curious fact, however, that the pay for job-work has decreased very
decidedly.

And how do we live? it is asked. Well enough. All of us eat two meals a
day; but what we eat depends upon our money. We three, who draw up this
account, work in one room. We begin fasting, and maintain our fast until
eleven o'clock. Then we send the apprentice out to fetch our breakfasts.
When he comes back with his stores, he disposes them neatly on a centre
table in little groups. 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. He has a pennyworth of cold boiled (unsalted) beef, a pennyworth of
bread, a halfpennyworth of cheese and a pennyworth of currant jam.
Friponnet is more extravagant. A common breakfast bill of fare with him
is two penny sausages, twopennyworth of bread, a pennyworth of wine, a
halfpenny _paquet de couenne_ (which is a little parcel of crisply fried
strips of bacon rind), and a baked pear. All this is sumptuous; for we
are of the aristocracy of workmen. The labourers of Paris do not live so
well. They go to the _gargottes_, where they get threepence
halfpennyworth of bouilli--soup, beef and vegetable--which includes the
title to a liberal supply of bread. Reeking, dingy dens are those
_gargottes_, where all the poorer classes of Parisian workmen save the
beef out of their breakfast bouilli, and carry it away to eat later in
the day at the wine-shop; where it will make a dinner with more bread and
a pennyworth of wine. Of bread they eat a great deal; and, reckoning
that at fourpence and the wine at a penny, we find eightpence to be the
daily cost of living to the great body of Parisian workmen.

We aristos among workpeople dine famously. My own practice is to dine in
the street du Petit Carre upon dinners for ninepence; or, by taking
dinner-tickets for fourteen days in advance, I get one dinner a fortnight
given me gratuitously. I di