waiting, threatening the family with expulsion, and the mother losing her
head, thirsting for death, and prevailing on her little ones to die with
her, while her husband, who had been out since the morning, was vainly
scouring the streets. Just as the Commissary of Police arrived to verify
what had happened, the poor devil returned, and when he had seen and
understood things, he fell to the ground like a stunned ox, and raised a
prolonged, plaintive howl, such a poignant cry of death that the whole
terrified street wept at it.

Both in his ears and in his heart Pierre carried away with him that
horrible cry, the plaint of a condemned race expiring amidst abandonment
and hunger; and that night he could neither eat nor sleep. Was it
possible that such abomination, such absolute destitution, such black
misery leading straight to death should exist in the heart of that great
city of Paris, brimful of wealth, intoxicated with enjoyment, flinging
millions out of the windows for mere pleasure? What! there should on one
side be such colossal fortunes, so many foolish fancies gratified, with
lives endowed with every happiness, whilst on the other was found
inveterate poverty, lack even of bread, absence of every hope, and
mothers killing themselves with their babes, to whom they had nought to
offer but the blood of their milkless breast! And a feeling of revolt
stirred Pierre; he was for a moment conscious of the derisive futility of
charity. What indeed was the use of doing that which he did--picking up
the little ones, succouring the parents, prolonging the sufferings of the
aged? The very foundations of the social edifice were rotten; all would
soon collapse amid mire and blood. A great act of justice alone could
sweep the old world away in order that the new world might be built. And
at that moment he realised so keenly how irreparable was the breach, how
irremediable the evil, how deathly the cancer of misery, that he
understood the actions of the violent, and was himself ready to accept