rags of both sexes, a promiscuous assemblage, a strange and revolting
mass of life. The accommodation of this sleeping chamber was open to
all, at the rate of two sous a week. On a stormy night the rain fell
upon the feet, the whirling snow settled on the bodies of those wretched
sleepers.

Who were these people? The unknown. They came there at night, and
departed in the morning. Creatures of this kind form part of the social
fabric. Some stole in during the darkness, and paid nothing. The greater
part had scarcely eaten during the day. All kinds of vice and baseness,
every sort of moral infection, every species of distress were there. The
same sleep settled down upon all in this bed of filth. The dreams of all
these companions in misery went on side by side. A dismal meeting-place,
where misery and weakness, half-sobered debauchery, weariness from long
walking to and fro, with evil thoughts, in quest of bread, pallor with
closed eyelids, remorse, envy, lay mingled and festering in the same
miasma, with faces that had the look of death, and dishevelled hair
mixed with the filth and sweepings of the streets. Such was the putrid
heap of life fermenting in this dismal spot. An unlucky turn of the
wheel of fortune, a ship arrived on the day before, a discharge from
prison, a dark night, or some other chance, had cast them here, to find
a miserable shelter. Every day brought some new accumulation of such
misery. Let him enter who would, sleep who could, speak who dared; for
it was a place of whispers. The new comers hastened to bury themselves
in the mass, or tried to seek oblivion in sleep, since there was none in
the darkness of the place. They snatched what little of themselves they
could from the jaws of death. They closed their eyes in that confusion
of horrors which every day renewed. They were the embodiment of misery,
thrown off from society, as the scum is from the sea.

It was not every one who could even get a share of the straw. More than
one figure was stretched out naked upon the flags. They lay down worn
out with weariness, and awoke paralysed. The well, without lid or
parapet, and thirty feet in depth, gaped open night and day. Rain fell
around it; filth accumulated about, and the gutters of the yard ran down
and filtered through its sides. The pail for drawing the water stood by
the side. Those who were thirsty drank there; some, disgusted with life,
drowned themselves in it--slipped from their slumber in