assembled there.

Bianchon found his uncle in the middle of the parlor, where the
benches were occupied by patients presenting such grotesque
singularities of costume as would have made the least artistic
passer-by turn round to gaze at them. A draughtsman--a Rembrandt, if
there were one in our day--might have conceived of one of his finest
compositions from seeing these children of misery, in artless
attitudes, and all silent.

Here was the rugged countenance of an old man with a white beard and
an apostolic head--a Saint Peter ready to hand; his chest, partly
uncovered, showed salient muscles, the evidence of an iron
constitution which had served him as a fulcrum to resist a whole poem
of sorrows. There a young woman was suckling her youngest-born to keep
it from crying, while another of about five stood between her knees.
Her white bosom, gleaming amid rags, the baby with its transparent
flesh-tints, and the brother, whose attitude promised a street arab in
the future, touched the fancy with pathos by its almost graceful
contrast with the long row of faces crimson with cold, in the midst of
which sat this family group. Further away, an old woman, pale and
rigid, had the repulsive look of rebellious pauperism, eager to avenge
all its past woes in one day of violence.

There, again, was the young workman, weakly and indolent, whose
brightly intelligent eye revealed fine faculties crushed by necessity
struggled with in vain, saying nothing of his sufferings, and nearly
dead for lack of an opportunity to squeeze between the bars of the
vast stews where the wretched swim round and round and devour each
other.