oul therein finds their last bed in the hospital.
This is the _quartier_ Mouffetard, where bits of old Paris are still
discernible, and where strange trades are in operation; industries which
only a people so pinched and driven by sharp necessity could ever have
invented.

The descent to these is a gradual one, and most often the women who are
found in them have known more than one occupation, and have been, in the
beginning at least, needlewomen of greater or less degree of skill.
Depression of wages, which now are at the lowest limit of subsistence,
drives them into experiments in other directions, and often failing
sight or utter weariness of the monotonous employment is another cause.
These form but a small proportion of such workers, who generally are a
species of guild, a family having begun some small new industry and
gradually drawn in others, till a body of workers in the same line is
formed, strong enough to withstand any interlopers.

"What becomes of the women who are too old to sew, and who have never
gained skill enough to earn more than a bare living?" I asked one day of
a seamstress whose own skill was unquestioned, but who, even with this
in her favor, averages only three francs a day.

"They do many things, madame. One who is my neighbor is now scrubber and
cleaner, and is happily friends with a '_concierge_,' who allows her to
aid him. That is a difficulty for all who would do that work. It is that
the '_concierges_,' whether men or women, think that any pay from the
'_locataires_' must be for them; and so they will never tell the tenant
of a woman who seeks work, but will say always, 'It is I who can do it
all. One cannot trust these from the outside.' But for her, as I say,
there is opportunity, and at last she has food, when as '_couturiere_'
it was quite--yes, quite impossible. There was a child, an idiot--the
child of her daughter who is dead, and from whom she refuses always to
be separated, and she sews always on the sewing-machine, till sickness
comes, and it is sold for rent and many things. She is proud. She has
not wished to scrub and clean, but for such work is twenty-five centimes
an hour, and often food that the tenant does not wish. At times they
give her less, and in any case one calculates always the time and
watches very closely, but for her, at least, is more money than for many
years; sometimes even three francs, if a day has been good. But that is
but seldom, and she must carry