"
"Besides," continued the priest, "I really wanted to go to Montmartre
to-day. I haven't told you so, but something has been worrying me. If
Salvat has fled, he must have left the woman and the child all alone up
yonder. On the morning of the day when the explosion took place I saw the
poor creatures in such a state of destitution, such misery, that I can't
think of them without a heart-pang. Women and children so often die of
hunger when the man is no longer there."
At this, Guillaume, who had kept Pierre's hand in his own, pressed it
more tightly, and in a trembling voice exclaimed: "Yes, yes, and that
will be good and brave too. Go there, brother, go there."
That house of the Rue des Saules, that horrible home of want and agony,
had lingered in Pierre's memory. To him it was like an embodiment of the
whole filthy /cloaca/, in which the poor of Paris suffer unto death. And
on returning thither that afternoon, he found the same slimy mud around
it; its yard littered with the same filth, its dark, damp stairways
redolent of the same stench of neglect and poverty, as before. In winter
time, while the fine central districts of Paris are dried and cleansed,
the far-away districts of the poor remain gloomy and miry, beneath the
everlasting tramp of the wretched ones who dwell in them.
Remembering the staircase which conducted to Salvat's lodging, Pierre
began to climb it amidst a loud screaming of little children, who
suddenly became quiet, letting the house sink into death-like silence
once more.
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