fast to unhealthful trades, await the coming of the blessed Sunday like a
puff of refreshing air, essential to their health and their life. What
an overflow of spirits, therefore, what a pressing need of noisy mirth!
It seems as if the oppression of the week's labor vanishes with the steam
from the machinery, as it escapes in a hissing cloud of vapor over the
gutters.

One by one the workmen moved away from the grating, counting the money
that glistened in their black hands. There were disappointments,
mutterings, remonstrances, hours missed, money drawn in advance; and
above the tinkling of coins, Sigismond's voice could be heard, calm and
relentless, defending the interests of his employers with a zeal
amounting to ferocity.

Frantz was familiar with all the dramas of pay-day, the false accents and
the true. He knew that one man's wages were expended for his family, to
pay the baker and the druggist, or for his children's schooling.

Another wanted his money for the wine-shop or for something even worse.
And the melancholy, downcast shadows passing to and fro in front of the
factory gateway--he knew what they were waiting for--that they were all
on the watch for a father or a husband, to hurry him home with
complaining or coaxing words.

Oh! the barefooted children, the tiny creatures wrapped in old shawls,
the shabby women, whose tear-stained faces were as white as the linen
caps that surmounted them.

Oh! the lurking vice that prowls about on pay-day, the candles that are
lighted in the depths of dark alleys, the dirty windows of the wine-shops