"These cave-dwellers live with utter improvidence, although deprived of
sufficient food. Three or four couples there have some four or five
children to each.

"These families have for the most part formed in the cave-dwellings. A
young mother whom I saw there with four children, the only one dressed
with an approach to decency, when interrogated by me told me that she
had been brought there by her mother at the age of eight. That was
twenty-four years ago. She was fair, with tawny hair, and of the
Normandy type. She had been born in a village of the neighbourhood, and
her mother took refuge in the caverns, apparently in consequence of the
loss of her husband.

"I heard of an individual who had been on the parish on account of his
incurable laziness, till the mayor losing all patience with him, had
him transported to these cave-dwellings and left there. There he
settled down, picked up a wife, and had a family.

"These people live quite outside the law, and are quit of all taxes and
obligations. As to their marriages they are preceded and followed by no
formalities. No attempt is made on the part of the authorities to get
the children to school. One gentleman resident in the neighbourhood, a
M. Frederic Passy, did take pains to ameliorate their condition. He
collected the children and laboured to infuse into their hearts and
heads some sort of moral principle. But his efforts were ineffectual,
and left not a trace behind. They recollect him and his son well
enough, but confuse the one with the other. And two of those who were
under instruction for a while, when I questioned them about it, allowed
that they had submitted to be bored by them for the sake of profiting
by their charity.