ing forward at an even
trot--an endless procession of men and women occupying every grade in
the social scale,--elegantly attired women and girls, men dressed in
stylish fashion, others clad poorly and with the dust of their hard
toil still clinging to their garments, and, mingled with them all,
half-grown children,--boys and girls, who had been busy at counter or
workshop throughout the day.

It was like a miniature reflection of life itself,--life in a large
city, with all its toil and its wealth, its misery and its luxury.

On the pavement cabs and busses rattled past in endless succession;
and elegant carriages, drawn swiftly by spirited horses and carrying
the princes of trade and of birth, and veiled ladies, who might be
actresses or countesses, for all one could tell, rolled smoothly
along.

Scurrying to and fro in zigzag line, and emitting those peculiar
doleful notes invented for them, automobiles were mixed up in
apparently inextricable confusion with all this hurly-burly of
vehicles, while the trams clanged their bells, and passengers stood
waiting on the edge of the sidewalks, desirous of boarding them, yet
afraid to risk their lives in the turmoil and bustle of the
intervening space. All this excitement of metropolitan life, this
feverish haste, and this pitiless crush, bore the stamp of intense
work performed in a human ant-hill, where every one of the countless
inmates has to fulfil his duty unremittingly, so that combined toil
will produce a harmonious whole.

An elegantly attired pair turned the corner into a poorly lighted side
street, and then took their way along the middle of the road, picking
their steps among all the scraps of paper and the refuse of every kind
that covered it. They came to a halt before a house the exterior of
which showed it to be inhabited by persons in straitened
circumstances, and then they ascended the well-worn front steps
leading to its main entrance. The doorkeeper peered out of his little
lodge and merely nodded slightly to the two. They had come here only a
few days before, after leaving the stylish and expensive Grand Hotel,
and that fact had furnished the man with food for reflection. They
were former First Lieutenant Borgert and Frau Leimann. They had turned
their steps to the French capital, in the hope to be there secured
against any possible police persecution, expecting to be able to earn
a living in this city of millions, which furnishes daily bread to so