down their burdens. A fat yet
acrid odor rises about these huts, drawn out from the rags by the
afternoon heat; yet, repulsive as it is, there is more sense of
cleanliness about it than in the hideous basements where the same trade
is plied in London or New York. There is a space here not yet occupied
by buildings. The line of huts faces the south; a fence encloses them;
and so silent and alone seems the spot that it is easy to understand why
it bears its own individual name, and to the colony of _chiffoniers_ who
dwell here has long been known as the City of the Sun. Doors stand open
freely; honesty is a tradition of this profession; and the police know
that these delvers in dust heaps will bring to them any precious object
found therein, and that he who should remove the slightest article from
one of these dwellings would be banished ignominiously and deprived of
all rights of association.

These huts are all alike; two rooms, the larger reserved for the bed,
the smaller for kitchen, and in both rags of every variety. In the
corner is a heap chiefly of silk, wool, and linen. This is the pile from
which rent is to come, and every precious bit goes to it, since rent
here is paid in advance,--three francs a week for the hut alone, and
twenty francs a month if a scrap of court is added in which the rags can
be sorted. On a fixed day the proprietor appears, and, if the sum is not
ready, simply carries off the door and windows, and expels the unlucky
tenant with no further formality. How the stipulated amount is scraped
together, only the half-starved _chiffoniers_ know, since prices have
fallen so that the hundred kilogrammes (about two hundred pounds) of
rags, which, before the war, sold for eighty francs, to-day bring
precisely eight.

"In a good day, madame," said the woman, "we can earn three francs. We
are always together, I and my man, and we never cease. But the dead
season comes, that is, the summer, when Paris is in the country or at
the sea; then we can earn never more than two francs, and often not more
than thirty sous, when they clean the streets so much, and so carry away
everything that little is left for us. It is five years that I have
followed my man, and he is born to it, and works always, but the time is
changed. There is no more a living in this, or in anything we can do. I
have gone hungry when it is the sewing that I do, and I go hungry now,
but I am not alone. It is so for all of us, and we care n