her own soap and brush, and pay for all.

"That is one way, and there is another that fills me with terror,
madame, lest I, too, may one day find myself in it. It is last and worst
of all for women, I think. It is when they wear '_le cachemire
d'osier_.' You do not know it, madame. It is the chiffonieress basket
which she bears as a badge, and which she hangs at night, it may be, in
the City of the Sun. _Voila_, madame. There are now two who are on their
way. If madame has curiosity, it is easy to follow them."

"But the City of the Sun? What is that? Do you mean Paris?"

"No, madame. It is a mockery like the '_cachemire d'osier_.' You will
see."

It is in this following that the polished veneer which makes the outward
Paris showed what may lie beneath. Certainly, no one who walks through
the Avenue Victor Hugo, one of the twelve avenues radiating from the Arc
de Triomphe, and including some of the gayest and most brilliant life of
modern Paris, the creation of Napoleon III. and of Baron Haussman, would
dream that hint of corruption could enter in. The ancient Rue de la
Revolte has changed form and title, and the beautiful avenue is no
dishonor to its present name. But far down there opens nearly
imperceptibly a narrow alley almost subterranean, and it is through this
alley that the two figures which had moved silently down the avenue
passed and went on; the man solid and compact, as if well-fed, his face
as he turned, however, giving the lie to such impression, but his keen
alert eyes seeing every shade of difference in the merest scrap of
calico or tufts of hair. For the woman, it was plain to see why the
needle had been of small service, her wandering, undecided blue eyes
passing over everything to which the man's hook had not first directed
her.

Through the narrow way the pair passed into a sombre court, closed at
the end by a door of wood with rusty latch, which creaks and objects as
one seeks to lift it. Once within, and the door closed, the place has no
reminder of the Paris just without. On the contrary, it might be a bit
from the beggars' quarter in a village of Syria or Palestine, for here
is only a line of flat-roofed huts, the walls whitewashed, the floors
level with the soil, and the sun of the warm spring day pouring down
upon sleeping dogs, and heaps of refuse alternating with piles of rags,
in the midst of which work two or three women, silent at present, and
barely looking up as the new comers lay