had continual struggles with the
keepers when I gave clothes or blankets to the women and children.
They said some of the women were as bad as the men, and that I ought
not to encourage them to come up to the house and beg for food and
clothing; that they sold all the little jackets and petticoats we gave
them to the canal hands (also a bad lot) for brandy. I believe it was
true in some cases, but in the middle of winter, with snow on the
ground (we were hardly warm in the house with big fires everywhere), I
couldn't send away women with four or five children, all
insufficiently clothed and fed, most of them in cotton frocks with an
old worn knit shawl around their shoulders, legs and arms bare and
chapped, half frozen. Some of them lived in caverns or great holes in
the rocks, really like beasts. On the road to La Ferte there was a big
hole (there is no other word for it) in the bank where a whole family
lived. The man was always in prison for something, and his wife, a
tall, gaunt figure, with wild hair and eyes, spent most of her time in
the woods teaching her boys to set traps for the game. The cure told
us that one of the children was ill, and that there was literally
nothing in the house, so I took one of my cousins with me, and we
climbed up the bank, leaving the carriage with Hubert, the coachman,
expostulating seriously below. We came to a rickety old door which
practically consisted of two rotten planks nailed together. It was
ajar; clouds of black smoke poured out as we opened it, and it was
some time before we could see anything. We finally made out a heap of
filthy rags in one corner near a sort of fire made of charred pieces
of black peat. Two children, one a boy about twelve years old, was
lying on the heap of rags, coughing his heart out. He hardly raised
his head when we came in. Another child, a girl, some two years
younger, was lying beside him, both of them frightfully thin and
white; one saw nothing but great dark eyes in their faces. The mother
was crouched on the floor close to the children. She hardly moved at
first, and was really a terrifying object when she got up; half
savage, scarcely clothed--a short petticoat in holes and a ragged
bodice gaping open over her bare skin, no shoes or stockings; big
black eyes set deep in her head, and a quantity of unkempt black hair.
She looked enormous when she stood up, her head nearly touching the
roof. I didn't feel very comfortable, but we were two, and