train _de
luxe,_ and a mere fleabite as a bribe to a journalist. It would be
enormous to give it to an apostle begging at a church door, but
nothing to spend on luncheon.

Properly spent I can imagine it saving five or six souls, but I cannot
believe that so paltry a sum would damn half an one.

Then, again, it would be a nice thing to sing about. Thus, if one were
a modern fool one might write a dirge with 'Huit francs et dix
centimes' all chanted on one low sad note, and coming in between
brackets for a 'motif, and with a lot about autumn and Death--which
last, Death that is, people nowadays seem to regard as something odd,
whereas it is well known to be the commonest thing in the world. Or
one might make the words the Backbone of a triolet, only one would
have to split them up to fit it into the metre; or one might make it
the decisive line in a sonnet; or one might make a pretty little lyric
of it, to the tune of 'Madame la Marquise'--

_'Huit francs et dix centimes, Tra la la, la la la.'_

Or one might put it rhetorically, fiercely, stoically, finely,
republicanly into the Heroics of the Great School. Thus--

HERNANI _(with indignation)... dans ces efforts sublimes_'Qu'avez
vous a offrir?_'

RUY BLAS _(simply) Huit francs et dix centimes!_

Or finally (for this kind of thing cannot go on for ever), one might
curl one's hair and dye it black, and cock a dirty slouch hat over one
ear and take a guitar and sit on a flat stone by the roadside and
cross one's legs, and, after a few pings and pongs on the strings,
strike up a Ballad with the refrain--

_Car j'ai toujours huit francs et dix centimes!_ a jocular,
sub-sardonic, a triumphant refrain!

But all this is by the way; the point is, why was the eight francs and
ten centimes of such importance just there and then?

For this reason, that I could get no more money before Milan; and I
think a little reflection will show you what a meaning lies in that
phrase. Milan was nearer ninety miles than eighty miles off. By the
strict road it was over ninety. And so I was forced to consider and to
be anxious, for how would this money hold out?

There was nothing for it but forced marches, and little prospect of
luxuries. But could it be done?

I thought it could, and I reasoned this way.

'It is true I need a good deal of food, and that if a man is to cover
great distances he must keep fit. It is also true that many men have
done more on less. On the other hand