The Shirt Of Monsieur Jean

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 36, 1 March 1940, Page 37

The Shirt Of Monsieur Jean

By

M. H.

M.

N pre-Great War days there lived in Paris a certain Monsieur Jean-a person of culture and of sufficient means to live in gentlemanly bachelor fashion, Then the war came. Incomes played strange pranks. Monsieur Jean became one of the New Poor. Too old to be of use to the army, without training for any work, the only way he could earn was by teaching French. But who in Paris wanted to learn French during the Great War? Moreover, Paris was becoming very uricomfortable and Monsieur Jean loved comfort. He decided to go to London, There he took a modest lodging in Bloomsbury: and found a few (but, alas, a very few) pupils. Times were bad with the emigré; for a man who took pride in his

appearance to be reduced to two shirts, was desolating. One on. his back, one with the laundress. There came a night when he was invited to dine-a clean shirt was a necessity, but it had not returned ‘from the wash, Monsieur Jean made a personal call on. the laundress. The. shirt was not ‘ironed, but if Mensieur Jean would wait or return in half-an-hour it would be ready. Monsieur weighed the alternatives and decided on a short .walk. An Air Raid Siren wailed its melancholy warning. Monsieur continued ° his promenade. Life and death: are~in: the hands of Fate. = i Precisely to the moment, he returned to the establishment of his laundress but in his short absence the house had been bombed; it had become a heap of bricks; the busy laundress was dead; the of Monsieur Jean had’ vanished, He never saw it again, yet reflected with philosophy that had he waited. for it he, too, would have been among the missing. . . Life and death are in’ the hands of