LOST IN THE CATACOMBS.
INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN.
The place where we emerged from the catacombs was some distance from where we descended into the earth. It was in the same field, and through an excavation which promised as little as the one by which we descended. The light of the Roman sun seemed much brighter than when we left it, and it was some minutes before our eyes were accustomed to its dazzling rays.
LIX.
THE PARISIAN RAG-PICKERS.
THEIR NUMBER AND EQUIPMENT.—THEIR KEEN-SIGHTEDNESS AND SKILL.—THE PLEASURE OF THE BOTTLE.—SEEKING COMFORT UNDER DIFFICULTIES.—UNWHOLESOME MAGAZINES.—WHERE AND HOW THE CHIFFONNIERS LIVE.—DISMAL AND NOISOME ABODES.—A SOUP LOTTERY.—QUAINT SCENES IN CHEAP BOOK-SHOPS.—TASTING ROAST CAT AND STEWED PUPPY.—ROMANCE IN DIRT-HEAPS.—A HIDEOUS HAG ONCE A FAMOUS BEAUTY.—PENITENCE AND REFORMATION THROUGH FIRE.
Everybody who has been in Paris—and who has not?—remembers the rag-pickers, or chiffonniers, as they are styled, who frequent the streets after nightfall, searching the city through for the means of subsistence. One sees them so much, and in every quarter of the French capital, that he imagines there must be several thousand of them. The entire number, however, does not exceed six hundred, one half of whom are women and children. Though rag-pickers in name, they are something more in fact, since they gather up every article of the most trifling value—old corks, fragments of bone or glass, coal or wood, scraps of paper, ends of cigars, and all sorts of rubbish that can be sold for the fraction of a sou.