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himself at his ease. "Silviane is right, people naturally like a laugh

now and then!"

Amidst the uproar, which did not cease, little Princess Rosemonde rose

enthusiastically to get a better view. "Why, it's your father who's with

that woman Silviane," she said to Hyacinthe. "Just look at them! Well, he

certainly has plenty of bounce to show himself here with her!"

Hyacinthe, however, refused to look. It didn't interest him, his father

was an idiot, only a child would lose his head over a girl in that

fashion. And with his contempt for woman the young man became positively

insulting.

"You try my nerves, my dear fellow," said Rosemonde as she sat down. "You

are the child with your silly ideas about us. And as for your father, he

does quite right to love that girl. I find her very pretty indeed, quite

adorable!"

Then all at once the uproar ceased, those who had risen resumed their

seats, and the only sound was that of the feverish throb which coursed

through the assembly. Legras had just appeared on the platform. He was a

pale sturdy fellow with a round and carefully shaven face, stern eyes,

and the powerful jaws of a man who compels the adoration of women by

terrorising them. He was not deficient in talent, he sang true, and his

ringing voice was one of extraordinary penetration and pathetic power.

And his _repertoire_, his "Flowers of the Pavement," completed the

explanation of his success; for all the foulness and suffering of the

lower spheres, the whole abominable sore of the social hell created by

the rich, shrieked aloud in these songs in words of filth and fire and

blood.

A prelude was played on the piano, and Legras standing there in his

velvet jacket sang "La Chemise," the horrible song which brought all

Paris to hear him. All the lust and vice that crowd the streets of the

great city appeared with their filth and their poison; and amid the

picture of Woman stripped, degraded, ill-treated, dragged through the

mire and cast into a cesspool, there rang out the crime of the

_bourgeoisie_. But the scorching insult of it all was less in the words

themselves than in the manner in which Legras cast them in the faces of

the rich, the happy, the beautiful ladies who came to listen to him.

Under the low ceiling, amidst the smoke from the pipes, in the blinding

glare of the gas, he sent his lines flying through the assembly like

expectorations, projected by a whirlwind of furious contempt. And when he

had finished there came delirium; the beautiful ladies did not even think

of wiping away the many affronts they had received, but applauded

frantically. The whole assembly stamped and shouted, and wallowed,

distracted, in its ignominy.

"Bravo! bravo!" the little Princess repeated in her shrill voice. "It's

astonishing, astonishing, prodigious!"

And Silviane, whose intoxication seemed to have increased since she had

been there, in the depths of that fiery furnace, made herself

particularly conspicuous by the manner in which she clapped her hands and

shouted: "It's he, it's my Legras! I really must kiss him, he's pleased

me so much!"

Duvillard, now fairly exasperated, wished to take her off by force. But

she clung to the hand-rest of the box, and shouted yet more loudly,

though without any show of temper. It became necessary to parley with

her. Yes, she was willing to go off and let them drive her home; but,

first of all, she must embrace Legras, who was an old friend of hers. "Go

and wait for me in the carriage!" she said, "I will be with you in a

moment."

Just as the assembly was at last becoming calmer, Rosemonde perceived

that the box was emptying; and her own curiosity being satisfied, she

thought of prevailing on Hyacinthe to see her home. He, who had listened

to Legras in a languid way without even applauding, was now talking of

Norway with Bergaz, who pretended that he had travelled in the North. Oh!

the fiords! oh! the ice-bound lakes! oh! the pure lily-white, chaste

coldness of the eternal winter! It was only amid such surroundings, said

Hyacinthe, that he could understand woman and love, like a kiss of the

very snow itself.

"Shall we go off there to-morrow?" exclaimed the Princess with her

vivacious effrontery. "I'll shut up my house and slip the key under the

door."

Then she added that she was jesting, of course. But Bergaz knew her to be

quite capable of such a freak; and at the idea that she might shut up her

little mansion and perhaps leave it unprotected he exchanged a quick

glance with Sanfaute and Rossi, who still smiled in silence. Ah! what an

opportunity for a fine stroke! What an opportunity to get back some of

the wealth of the community appropriated by the blackguard _bourgeoisie_!

Meantime Raphanel, after applauding Legras, was looking all round the

place with his little grey, sharp eyes. And at last young Mathis and his

companion, the ill-clad individual, of whose face only a scrap of beard

could be seen, attracted his attention. They had neither laughed nor

applauded; they seemed to be simply a couple of tired fellows who were

resting, and in whose opinion one is best hidden in the midst of a crowd.

All at once, though, Raphanel turned towards Bergaz: "That's surely

little Mathis over yonder. But who's that with him?"

Bergaz made an evasive gesture; he did not know. Still, he no longer took

his eyes from Raphanel. And he saw the other feign indifference at what

followed, and finish his beer and take his leave, with the jesting remark

that he had an appointment with a lady at a neighbouring omnibus office.

No sooner had he gone than Bergaz rose, sprang over some of the forms and

jostled people in order to reach little Mathis, into whose ear he

whispered a few words. And the young man at once left his table, taking

his companion and pushing him outside through an occasional exit. It was

all so rapidly accomplished that none of the general public paid

attention to the flight.

"What is it?" said the Princess to Bergaz, when he had quietly resumed

his seat between Rossi and Sanfaute.

"Oh! nothing, I merely wished to shake hands with Mathis as he was going

off."

Thereupon Rosemonde announced that she meant to do the same.

Nevertheless, she lingered a moment longer and again spoke of Norway on

perceiving that nothing could impassion Hyacinthe except the idea of the

eternal snow, the intense, purifying cold of the polar regions. In his

poem on the "End of Woman," a composition of some thirty lines, which he

hoped he should never finish, he thought of introducing a forest of

frozen pines by way of final scene. Now the Princess had risen and was

gaily reverting to her jest, declaring that she meant to take him home to

drink a cup of tea and arrange their trip to the Pole, when an

involuntary exclamation fell from Bergaz, who, while listening, had kept

his eyes on the doorway.

"Mondesir! I was sure of it!"

There had appeared at the entrance a short, sinewy, broad-backed little

man, about whose round face, bumpy forehead, and snub nose there was

considerable military roughness. One might have thought him a

non-commissioned officer in civilian attire. He gazed over the whole

room, and seemed at once dismayed and disappointed.

Bergaz, however, wishing to account for his exclamation, resumed in an

easy way: "Ah! I said there was a smell of the police about the place!

You see that fellow--he's a detective, a very clever one, named Mondesir,

who had some trouble when he was in the army. Just look at him, sniffing

like a dog that has lost scent! Well, well, my brave fellow, if you've

been told of any game you may look and look for it, the bird's flown

already!"

Once outside, when Rosemonde had prevailed on Hyacinthe to see her home,

they hastened to get into the brougham, which was waiting for them, for

near at hand they perceived Silviane's landau, with the majestic coachman

motionless on his box, while Duvillard, Gerard, and Duthil still stood

waiting on the curbstone. They had been there for nearly twenty minutes

already, in the semi-darkness of that outer boulevard, where all the

vices of the poor districts of Paris were on the prowl. They had been

jostled by drunkards; and shadowy women brushed against them as they went

by whispering beneath the oaths and blows of bullies. And there were

couples seeking the darkness under the trees, and lingering on the

benches there; while all around were low taverns and dirty lodging-houses

and places of ill-fame. All the human degradation which till break of day

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 Duthil

was willing to go off. Each hoped that he would tire out the others, and

take 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 it

would never finish. But an unexpected meeting gave them momentary

occupation. A shadowy form, something which seemed to be a thin,

black-skirted woman, brushed against them. And all of a sudden they were

surprised to find it was a priest.

"What, is it you, Monsieur l'Abbe Froment?" exclaimed Gerard. "At this

time of night? And in this part of Paris?"

Thereupon Pierre, without venturing either to express his own

astonishment at finding them there themselves, or to ask them what they

were doing, explained that he had been belated through accompanying Abbe

Rose on a visit to a night refuge. Ah! to think of all the frightful want

which at last drifted to those pestilential dormitories where the stench

had almost made him faint! To think of all the weariness and despair

which there sank into the slumber of utter prostration, like that of

beasts falling to the ground to sleep off the abominations of life! No

name could be given to the promiscuity; poverty and suffering were there

in heaps, children and men, young and old, beggars in sordid rags, beside

the shameful poor in threadbare frock-coats, all the waifs and strays of

the daily shipwrecks of Paris life, all the laziness and vice, and

ill-luck and injustice which the torrent rolls on, and throws off like

scum. Some slept on, quite annihilated, with the faces of corpses.

Others, lying on their backs with mouths agape, snored loudly as if still

venting 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 those

human beings, stretched there like wounded after a battle, from all that

ambulance of life reeking with a stench of rottenness and death, there

ascended a nausea born of revolt, the vengeance-prompting thought of all

the happy chambers where, at that same hour, the wealthy loved or rested

in fine linen and costly lace.*

* Even the oldest Paris night refuges, which are the outcome

of 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 Revolution

forward, there was absolutely no place, either refuge, asylum,

or workhouse, in the whole of that great city of wealth and

pleasure, where the houseless poor could crave a night's

shelter. The various royalist, imperialist and republican

governments and municipalities of modern France have often

been described as 'paternal,' but no governments and

municipalities in the whole civilised world have done less for

the very poor. The official Poor Relief Board--L'Assistance

Publique--has for fifty years been a by-word, a mockery and a

sham, in spite of its large revenue. And this neglect of the

very poor has been an important factor in every French

revolution. Each of these--even that of 1870--had its purely

economic side, though many superficial historians are content

to ascribe economic causes to the one Revolution of 1789, and

to pass them by in all other instances.--Trans.

In vain had Pierre and Abbe Rose passed all the poor wretches in review

while seeking the big Old'un, the former carpenter, so as to rescue him

from the cesspool of misery, and send him to the Asylum on the very

morrow. He had presented himself at the refuge that evening, but there

was no room left, for, horrible to say, even the shelter of that hell

could only be granted to early comers. And so he must now be leaning

against a wall, or lying behind some palings. This had greatly distressed

poor Abbe Rose and Pierre, but it was impossible for them to search every

dark, suspicious corner; and so the former had returned to the Rue

Cortot, while the latter was seeking a cab to convey him back to Neuilly.

The fine drizzling rain was still falling and becoming almost icy, when

Silviane's coachman, Jules, at last reappeared and interrupted the

priest, who was telling the Baron and the others how his visit to the

refuge still made him shudder.

"Well, Jules--and madame?" asked Duvillard, quite anxious at seeing the

coachman return alone.

Impassive and respectful, with no other sign of irony than a slight

involuntary twist of the lips, Jules answered: "Madame sends word that

she is not going home; and she places her carriage at the gentlemen's

disposal if they will allow me to drive them home."

This was the last straw, and the Baron flew into a passion. To have

allowed her to drag him to that vile den, to have waited there hopefully

so long, and to be treated in this fashion for the sake of a Legras! No,

no, he, the Baron, had had enough of it, and she should pay dearly for