thirty, he already had six children, three boys and
three girls, so that his wife seemed fated to much the same existence
as his mother La Moineaude. Both of them would finish broken down, and
their children in their turn would unconsciously perpetuate the swarming
and accursed starveling race.

At Euphrasie's, destiny the inevitable showed itself more tragic still.
The wretched woman had not been lucky enough to die. She had gradually
become bedridden, quite unable to move, though she lived on and could
hear and see and understand things. From that open grave, her bed, she
had beheld the final break-up of what remained of her sorry home. She
was nothing more than a thing, insulted by her husband and tortured by
Madame Joseph, who would leave her for days together without water, and
fling her occasional crusts much as they might be flung to a sick animal
whose litter is not even changed. Terror-stricken, and full of humility
amid her downfall, Euphrasie resigned herself to everything; but the
worst was that her three children, her twin daughters and her son, being
abandoned to themselves, sank into vice, the all-corrupting life of the
streets. Benard, tired out, distracted by the wreck of his home, had
taken to drinking with Madame Joseph; and afterwards they would fight
together, break the furniture, and drive off the children, who came home
muddy, in rags, and with their pockets full of stolen things. On two
occasions Benard disappeared for a week at a time. On the third he did
not come back at all. When the rent fell due, Madame Joseph in her turn
took herself off. And then came the end. Euphrasie had to be removed
to the hospital of La Salpetriere, the last refuge of the aged and the
infirm; while the children, henceforth without a home in name, were
driven into the gutter. The boy never turned up again; it was as if he
had been swallowed by some sewer. One of the twin girls, found in the
streets, died in a hospital during the ensuing year; and the other,
Toinette, a fair-haired scraggy hussy, who, however puny she might look,
was a terrible little creature with the eyes and the teeth of a wolf,
lived under the bridges, in the depths of the stone quarries, in the
dingy garrets of haunts of vice, so that at sixteen she was already an
expert thief. Her fate was similar to Alfred's; here was a girl morally
abandoned, then contaminated by the life of the streets, and carried off
to a criminal career. And, indeed, the unc