, with gas and water
laid on, apparatus for warming, etc., and a garden of ten acres, cost, at
the period of this narrative, hardly five hundred thousand francs. An
experienced builder less obliged us with an estimate, which confirms what
we advance. It is, therefore, evident, that, even at the same price which
workmen are in the habit of paying, it would be possible to provide them
with perfectly healthy lodgings, and yet invest one's money at ten per
cent.

[32] The fact was proved in the works connected with the Rouen Railway.
Those French workmen who, having no families, were able to live like the
English, did at least as much work as the latter, being strengthened by
wholesome and sufficient nourishment.

[33] Buying penny-worths, like all other purchases at minute retail, are
greatly to the poor man's disadvantage.

CHAPTER LII.

REVELATIONS.

During the visit of Angela and Agricola to the Common Dwelling-house, the
band of Wolves, joined upon the road by many of the haunters of taverns,
continued to march towards the factory, which the hackney-coach, that
brought Rodin from Paris, was also fast approaching. M. Hardy, on getting
out of the carriage with his friend, M. de Blessac, had entered the
parlor of the house that he occupied next the factory. M. Hardy was of
middle size, with an elegant and slight figure, which announced a nature
essentially nervous and impressionable. His forehead was broad and open,
his complexion pale, his eyes black, full at once of mildness and
penetration, his countenance honest, intelligent, and attractive.

One word will paint the character of M. Hardy. His mother had called him
her Sensitive Plant. His was indeed one of those fine and exquisitely
delicate organizations, which are trusting, loving, noble, generous, but
so susceptible, that the least touch makes them shrink into themselves.
If we join to this excessive sensibility a passionate love for art, a
first-rate intellect, tastes essentially refined, and then think of the
thousand deceptions, and numberless infamies of which M. Hardy must have
been the victim in his career as a manufacturer, we shall wonder how this
heart, so delicate and tender, had not been broken a thousand times, in
its incessant struggle with merciless self-interest. M. Hardy had indeed
suffered much. Forced to follow the career of productive industry, to
honor the engagements of his father, a model of uprightness and probity,
who had yet le