ops, than to write the
words in letters of gold over your churches. In every great city there
always is much want and misery; here, although succour is supposed to be
afforded to all who require it, many I fear are starving owing to that
bureaucrat love of classification which is the curse of France. After my
meagre dinner, I was strolling along the quays near the river,
_l'estomac_ as _leger_ as M. Ollivier's heart, when I saw a woman
leaning over the parapet. She turned as I was passing her, and the lamp
from the opposite gate of the Tuileries shone on her face. It was honest
and homely, but so careworn, so utterly hopeless, that I stopped to ask
her if she was ill. "Only tired and hungry'" she replied; "I have been
walking all day, and I have not eaten since yesterday." I took her to a
cafe and gave her some bread and coffee, and then she told me her story.
She was a peasant girl from Franche Comte, and had come to Paris, where
she had gone into service. But she had soon tired of domestic servitude,
and for the last year she had supported herself by sewing waistcoats in
a great wholesale establishment. At the commencement of the siege she
had been discharged, and for some days she found employment in a
Government workshop, but for the last three weeks she had wandered here
and there, vainly asking for work. One by one she had sold every article
of dress she possessed, except the scanty garments she wore, and she had
lived upon bread and celery. The day before she had spent her last sou,
and when I saw her she had come down to the river, starving and
exhausted, to throw herself into it. "But the water looked so cold, I
did not dare," she said. Thus spoke the grisette of Paris, very
different from the gay, thoughtless being of French romance, who lives
in a garret, her window shrouded with flowers, is adored by a student,
and earns enough money in a few hours to pass the rest of the week
dancing, gossiping, and amusing herself. As I listened to her, I felt
ashamed of myself for repining because I had only had one plate of meat.
The hopeless, desolate condition of this poor girl is that of many of
her class to-day. But why should they complain? Is not King William the
instrument of Heaven, and is he not engaged in a holy cause? That Kings
should fight and that seamstresses should weep is in the natural order
of things. Frenchmen and Frenchwomen only deserve to be massacred or
starved if they are so lost to all sense of wh