nt of any inclination that way. We others sometimes
bring him a little wine and a crust, of course; but when one has nothing
oneself, how can one give to others?"

Pierre, terrified, gazed at that frightful remnant of humanity, that
remnant into which fifty years of toil, misery and social injustice had
turned a man. And he ended by distinguishing Laveuve's white, worn,
sunken, deformed head. Here, on a human face, appeared all the ruin
following upon hopeless labour. Laveuve's unkempt beard straggled over
his features, suggesting an old horse that is no longer cropped; his
toothless jaws were quite askew, his eyes were vitreous, and his nose
seemed to plunge into his mouth. But above all else one noticed his
resemblance to some beast of burden, deformed by hard toil, lamed, worn
to death, and now only good for the knackers.

"Ah! the poor fellow," muttered the shuddering priest. "And he is left to
die of hunger, all alone, without any succour? And not a hospital, not an
asylum has given him shelter?"

"Well," resumed Madame Theodore in her sad yet resigned voice, "the
hospitals are built for the sick, and he isn't sick, he's simply
finishing off, with his strength at an end. Besides he isn't always easy
to deal with. People came again only lately to put him in an asylum, but
he won't be shut up. And he speaks coarsely to those who question him,
not to mention that he has the reputation of liking drink and talking
badly about the gentle-folks. But, thank Heaven, he will now soon be
delivered."

Pierre had leant forward on seeing Laveuve's eyes open, and he spoke to
him tenderly, telling him that he had come from a friend with a little
money to enable him to buy what he might most pressingly require. At
first, on seeing Pierre's cassock, the old man had growled some coarse
words; but, despite his extreme feebleness, he still retained the pert
chaffing spirit of the Parisian artisan: "Well, then, I'll willingly
drink a drop," he said distinctly, "and have a bit of bread with it, if
there's the needful; for I've lost taste of both for a couple of days
past."

Celine offered her services, and Madame Theodore sent her to fetch a loaf
and a quart of wine with Abbe Rose's money. And in the interval she told
Pierre how Laveuve was at one moment to have entered the Asylum of the
Invalids of Labour, a charitable enterprise whose lady patronesses were
presided over by Baroness Duvillard. However, the usual regulation
inquiri