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swarms in the black mud of this part of Paris, enveloped the three men,giving them the horrors, and yet neither the Baron nor Gerard nor Duthilwas willing to go off. Each hoped that he would tire out the others, andtake Silviane home when she should at last appear.But after a time the Baron grew impatient, and said to the coachman:"Jules, go and see why madame doesn't come.""But the horses, Monsieur le Baron?""Oh! they will be all right, we are here."A fine drizzle had begun to fall; and the wait went on again as if itwould never finish. But an unexpected meeting gave them momentaryoccupation. A shadowy form, something which seemed to be a thin,black-skirted woman, brushed against them. And all of a sudden they weresurprised to find it was a priest.
"What, is it you, Monsieur l'Abbe Froment?" exclaimed Gerard. "At thistime of night? And in this part of Paris?"Thereupon Pierre, without venturing either to express his ownastonishment at finding them there themselves, or to ask them what theywere doing, explained that he had been belated through accompanying AbbeRose on a visit to a night refuge. Ah! to think of all the frightful wantwhich at last drifted to those pestilential dormitories where the stenchhad almost made him faint! To think of all the weariness and despairwhich there sank into the slumber of utter prostration, like that ofbeasts falling to the ground to sleep off the abominations of life! Noname could be given to the promiscuity; poverty and suffering were therein heaps, children and men, young and old, beggars in sordid rags, besidethe shameful poor in threadbare frock-coats, all the waifs and strays ofthe daily shipwrecks of Paris life, all the laziness and vice, andill-luck and injustice which the torrent rolls on, and throws off likescum. Some slept on, quite annihilated, with the faces of corpses.Others, lying on their backs with mouths agape, snored loudly as if stillventing the plaint of their sorry life. And others tossed restlessly,still struggling in their slumber against fatigue and cold and hunger,which pursued them like nightmares of monstrous shape. And from all thosehuman beings, stretched there like wounded after a battle, from all thatambulance of life reeking with a stench of rottenness and death, thereascended a nausea born of revolt, the vengeance-prompting thought of allthe happy chambers where, at that same hour, the wealthy loved or restedin fine linen and costly lace.*
* Even the oldest Paris night refuges, which are the outcomeof private philanthropy--L'Oeuvre de l'Hospitalite de Nuit--have only been in existence some fourteen or fifteen years.Before that time, and from the period of the great Revolutionforward, there was absolutely no place, either refuge, asylum,or workhouse, in the whole of that great city of wealth andpleasure, where the houseless poor could crave a night'sshelter. The various royalist, imperialist and republicangovernments and municipalities of modern France have oftenbeen described as 'paternal,' but no governments andmunicipalities in the whole civilised world have done less forthe very poor. The official Poor Relief Board--L'Assistance
