Chapter 10 Summary

The narrator describes the Hotel X in great detail. It is quite different from modern hotels, so the descriptions are all the more important to modern readers in understanding the story.

The narrator is to be employed as a plongeur, that is, a kitchen slave. He will make toast, wash dishes, fill drinks, clean up, run errands, and do anything else the waiters and cooks want him to do. The kitchen is an underground cellar, lit by a single light bulb and about 110 degrees, due to the ovens and stove in the small, underground stone room.

Boris and the narrator have a wonderful dinner on the leftovers of the higher-up employees. The doorkeeper asks the narrator to sign on for a month, but he doesn't because the Auberge de Jehan Cottard is to open in two weeks and he doesn't want to be...