ot if only the
children are fed. They are not, and it is because of them that we
suffer. See, madame, this is the child of my niece, who came with me
here, and has also her man, but never has any one of them eaten to the
full, even of crusts, which often are in what we gather."

The child ran toward her,--a girl three or four years old, wearing a
pair of women's shoes ten times too large, and the remainder of a
chemise. Other clothing had not been attempted, or was not considered
necessary, and the child looked up with hollow eyes and a face pinched
and sharpened by want, while the swollen belly of the meagre little
figure showed how wretched had been the supply they called food. All day
these children fare as they can, since all day the parents must range
the streets collecting their harvest; but fortunately for such future as
they can know, these little savages, fighting together like wild
animals, have within the last twenty years been gradually gathered into
free schools, the work beginning with a devoted woman, who, having seen
the City of the Sun, never rested till a school was opened for its
children. All effort, however, was quite fruitless, till an old
_chiffonier_, also once a seamstress, united with her, and persuaded the
mothers that they must prepare their children, or, at least, not prevent
them from going. At present the school stands as one of the wisest
philanthropies of Paris, but neither this, nor any other attempt to
better conditions, alters the fact that twelve and fourteen hours of
labor have for sole result from thirty to forty sous a day, and that
this sum represents the earnings of the average women-workers of Paris,
the better class of trades and occupations being no less limited in
possibilities.

CHAPTER XVII.

DRESSMAKERS AND MILLINERS IN PARIS.

"If a revolution come again, I think well, madame, it will be the great
shops that will fall, and that it is workwomen who will bear the torch
and even consent to the name of terror, _petroleuses_. For see a moment
what thing they do, madame. Everywhere, the girl who desires to learn as
_modiste_, and who, in the day when I had learned, became one of the
house that she served, and, if talent were there, could rise and in time
be mistress herself, with a name that had fame even,--that girl must now
attempt the great shop and bury her talent in always the same thing. No
more invention, no more grace, but a hundred robes always the same, a