the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, the Boulevard St. Denis, and so forth, as
far as the Place de la Republique, there came fresh want and misery, more
forsaken and hungry ones, more and more of the human "waste" that is cast
into the streets and the darkness. And on the other hand, an army of
street-sweepers was now appearing to remove all the filth of the past
four and twenty hours, in order that Paris, spruce already at sunrise,
might not blush for having thrown up such a mass of dirt and
loathsomeness in the course of a single day.

It was, however, more particularly after following the Boulevard
Voltaire, and drawing near to the districts of La Roquette and Charonne,
that the brothers felt they were returning to a sphere of labour where
there was often lack of food, and where life was but so much pain. Pierre
found himself at home here. In former days, accompanied by good Abbe
Rose, visiting despairing ones, distributing alms, picking up children
who had sunk to the gutter, he had a hundred times perambulated every one
of those long, densely populated streets. And thus a frightful vision
arose before his mind's eye; he recalled all the tragedies he had
witnessed, all the shrieks he had heard, all the tears and bloodshed he
had seen, all the fathers, mothers and children huddled together and
dying of want, dirt and abandonment: that social hell in which he had
ended by losing his last hopes, fleeing from it with a sob in the
conviction that charity was a mere amusement for the rich, and absolutely
futile as a remedy. It was this conviction which now returned to him as
he again cast eyes upon that want and grief stricken district which
seemed fated to everlasting destitution. That poor old man whom Abbe Rose
had revived one night in yonder hovel, had he not since died of
starvation? That little girl whom he had one morning brought in his arms
to the refuge after her parents' death, was it not she whom he had just
met, grown but fallen to the streets, and shrieking beneath the fist of a