greed to charge
nothing for the marriage-contract of the poor. As to the revenue
collectors, the whole machinery of Government would have to be
dislocated to induce the authorities to relax their demands. The
registrar's office is deaf and dumb.

Then the Church, too, receives a duty on marriages. In France the Church
depends largely on such revenues; even in the House of God it traffics
in chairs and kneeling stools in a way that offends foreigners;
though it cannot have forgotten the anger of the Saviour who drove
the money-changers out of the Temple. If the Church is so loath to
relinquish its dues, it must be supposed that these dues, known as
Vestry dues, are one of its sources of maintenance, and then the fault
of the Church is the fault of the State.

The co-operation of these conditions, at a time when charity is too
greatly concerned with the negroes and the petty offenders discharged
from prison to trouble itself about honest folks in difficulties,
results in the existence of a number of decent couples who have never
been legally married for lack of thirty francs, the lowest figure for
which the Notary, the Registrar, the Mayor and the Church will unite
two citizens of Paris. Madame de la Chanterie's fund, founded to restore
poor households to their religious and legal status, hunts up such
couples, and with all the more success because it helps them in their
poverty before attacking their unlawful union.

As soon as Madame Hulot had recovered, she returned to her occupations.
And then it was that the admirable Madame de la Chanterie came to beg
that Adeline would add the legalization of these voluntary unions to the
other good works of which she was the instrument.

One of the Baroness' first efforts in this cause was made in the
ominous-looking district, formerly known as la Petite Pologne--Little
Poland--bounded by the Rue du Rocher, Rue de la Pepiniere, and Rue
de Miromenil. There exists there a sort of offshoot of the Faubourg
Saint-Marceau. To give an idea of this part of the town, it is enough
to say that the landlords of some of the houses tenanted by working men
without work, by dangerous characters, and by the very poor employed in
unhealthy toil, dare not demand their rents, and can find no bailiffs
bold enough to evict insolvent lodgers. At the present time speculating
builders, who are fast changing the aspect of this corner of Paris, and
covering the waste ground lying between the Rue d'Amste