ly the sick recommended to him by the
lawyer, was not less well known than he to the poor creatures 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.

The majority were women; their husbands, gone to their work, left it
to them, no doubt, to plead the cause of the family with the ingenuity
which characterizes the woman of the people, who is almost always queen
in her hovel. You would have seen a torn bandana on every head, on every
form a skirt deep in mud, ragged kerchiefs, worn and dirty jackets, but
eyes that burnt like live coals. It was a horrible assemblage, raising
at first sight a feeling of disgust, but giving a certain sense of
terror the instant you perceived that the resignation of these souls,
all engaged in the struggle for every necessary of life, was purely
fortuitous, a speculation on benevolence. The two tallow candles which
lighted the parlor