And from the surrounding slums what a sea of misery seemed to wash up! At this time you may see human flotsam that is elsewhen invisible. In the bustling confusion of the dawn the human rats slink out of their holes to gain a few sous; not much—just four sous for soup and bread, four sous for a corner in the dosshouse, and a few sous for cognac. Here flourish all the métiers of misery. I saw five old women whose combined ages must have made up four hundred years, huddled together for warmth, and all sunk in twitching, shuddering sleep. I saw outcast men with livid faces and rat-chewed beards, whose clothes rotted on their rickety frames. I saw others dazed from a debauch, goggle-eyed, blue-lipped pictures of wretchedness. And the drinking dens in the narrow streets vomited forth more wanton women, and malevolent men, till it seemed to me that never does misery seem so pitiable, never vice so repulsive, as when it swirls round those teeming pavilions at four o’clock of a raw, rainy morning.
Suddenly I stopped to look at a female of unusual height and robust rotundity. A woman merchant of the markets, seemingly of substance no less than of flesh. Her voice was deep and hoarse, her eyes hard and grim, and the firmness of her mouth was accentuated by a deliberate moustache. A masculine woman. A truculent, overbearing woman. A very virago of a woman. Her complexion was of such a hard redness, her Roman nose so belligerent. On her bosom, which outstood like the seat of a fauteuil, reposed a heavy gold chain and locket. On her great, red wrists were bracelets of gold; and on her hands, which looked as if they could deliver a sledge-hammer blow, sparkled many rings. Beside this magnificent termagant her perspiring porters looked pusillanimous. “Here,” thought I, “is the very Queen of the Halles.”
She was enthroned amid a pile of wicker crates containing large grey shells. As I looked closer I saw that the grey shells contained grey snails, and that those on the top of the heap were peering forth and shooting out tentative grey horns. Some of them were even crawling up the basket work. Then as I watched them curiously a label on the crate caught my eye and I read:
Madame Séraphine Guinoval
Marchande d’Escargots
Les Halles, Paris.
“Guinoval,” I thought: “that’s odd. Surely I’ve heard that name before. Why, it’s the maiden name of Anastasia. The name of this enormous woman, then, is Guinoval. Sudden idea! Might it not be that there is some relationship between them?” But the contrast between my slight, shrinking Anastasia with her child-like face and this dragoon of a woman was so great that I dismissed the idea as absurd.
I was very tired when I reached home. I had been afoot four hours, and dropping on my bed I fell asleep. About eleven o’clock I awoke with a vague sense of fear. Something had happened, I felt. Hurrying down, I entered the hospital.
“Yes,” they told me; “my wife had been confined during the night. She was very weak, but doing well.”
“And the child,” I asked, trying to conceal my eagerness. “Was it a boy or a girl?”
“The child, Monsieur, was a girl” (how my heart leapt); “but unfortunately it—had not lived.”
“Dead!” I stammered; then after a stunned moment: