Although the best of the apples were now sold—for all save those on top were miserable things—we each ordered five kilos of the fruit to be delivered at my friend’s house. To obviate any more trickery we remained by the cart while this was done, and only paid after seeing the apples taken in by a servant; then went on to enjoy an unusually lovely afternoon in the Bois, sure of having made a good enough bargain, even though the fruit secured was only fit for cooking.
But my friend, on returning home an hour or so later, discovered we had been worsted after all!
After waiting until we were out of sight, the fruit-sellers went back to the house, and, presenting the pencilled line I had given and failed to reclaim, stated that we had decided to purchase all the remaining apples, at the price mentioned in the note. Consequently, twenty odd kilos of remnant fruit, such as no one else would buy, were landed at my friend’s house at a price more than double their worth!
On another occasion, when butter was unprocurable even at thirty francs a kilo, two peasant-women came to our house with butter smuggled in from the country, which they offered at twenty francs a kilo. Eager as we were for it, but made cautious by experience, we insisted upon tasting before buying. The women readily opened one package, and, on finding it excellent, we agreed to take all they had—five kilos; but, to prevent possible deception, we sampled each package, all of which were equally good. We therefore joyously paid the price, and, after contracting for more butter, and a quantity of eggs to be delivered the following week, dismissed the women with our blessings and sincere gratitude.
But, alackaday! when those glorious loaves of yellow butter were being prepared an hour later for preservation, they were discovered to be merely masses of filthy fat surrounding a large betterave, which made up the weight, the whole cleverly covered with a thin layer of good butter. Needless to say, the women never returned, and as it was strictly forbidden to buy peddled butter, we could do nothing but grin and bear it.
These fraudulent geniuses were products of the war, and no one who witnessed the pain they bravely endured, for three years and more, can justly condemn them.
And it was not only the poor who were driven to desperation by the enemy’s robbery. Everyone, save the very rich, or the Barons Zeep—the so-called soap-barons who made fortunes in secret relation with the Germans—was reduced to hard straits. Clothing became impossible to procure. Fashionable women were obliged to dye their linen sheets for summer wear, their blankets and curtains for winter; while club-men, in shiny trousers and frayed cuffs, were wont to exchange laughing comparisons as to the condition of their other wearing apparel, one likening his oft-patched pyjamas to Jacob’s coat of many colours!
A pathetic instance of this dire need came to my notice one day as I was trying to coax a farmer in the open fields to sell me potatoes—for there was no other means of obtaining this article of food save by buying surreptitiously, smuggling it home under cover of night, and burying it underground.
While I was talking to the farmer, an elderly man slowly passed us—a man evidently of good birth, whose clothes, though worn and shabby, showed the cut of a good tailor. Soon after he had passed, the farmer abruptly checked what he was saying to me and, with sullen eyes directed toward another part of his acres, muttered, “Look at that! They are all thieves, even the aristocrats!”