de coquins quand ils ont assemblé leur brebis "; but have played their last cheat, and cozened their last obolus; but cannot, for all their lies and sins, be left to die under a hedge.

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CHAPTER XI.

THE ST. DENIS DEPÔT.

AN authority at St. Denis said to me, "You must take the humane view in all these things," and it is taken sedulously even in the maison de repression of that ancient place where are the rifled tombs of the Kings of France. St. Denis streets prepare

you for the lazar-house which is now its chief public establishment. The place is of ancient, squalid, low appearance. The marks of age are not venerable, save upon the noble pile that covers the Bourbon tombs, and the costly toys of kings. The long, tortuous, ill-paved street that leads through a busy, poor, chaffering people, to the cathedral, and, to the left, to the house whither I was bound, is a fair sample of the main thoroughfare of a fourth-rate French provincial town, whose sous-préfet has not caught the Haussmann fever. The sewerage offends the sight and scent, and the pavement is a carpet of torture. The builder has reached St. Denis,

however, and the place will be presently, I doubt not, as clean and uninteresting as the new Batignolles. The builder is, moreover, on his way to the beggars, who are now housed, under military guard, behind a long, low, white-washed wall, broken in the centre by a shabby guard-house, and pierced with windows—each provided with a shelving trough, or timber reflector, that closes the view of the street to the repressed, while it permits light enough to penetrate that they may do that which the beggar loathes more than imprisonmentwork.

The sentry politely directed me to a squat, dark, greasy, and heavily-built door, of very repressing aspect; and I was admitted to the room of the subdirector, on the right of the entrance, by "a man on the key," who was careful about his bolts, behind me. I presented my permit, given me by the Prefect of Police on the invitation of Lord Lyons; and the sub-director called for a warder who was to take me in charge. Waiting for my guide, I observed a poor crippled wretch, fearful and shamed, waiting in a corner, to be dealt with as a new comer. He was a beggar, who had just been swept from the Paris streets, and had been brought hither to taste the plainest fare, and master a trade, if he knew none. He could earn his liberty, by learning how to earn his bread, and how to love "freedom wealthy with a crust." If past

work, he would in due time be transferred to the hospitable roof of the departmental beggars' retreat at Villers-Cotterets, a place connected historically with the State treatment of beggars,* and to which I shall presently draw the reader's attention.

I would note, however, on the threshold of this St. Denis prison, that the fundamental distinction which the French law draws between the poor man -the pauper-and the beggar or vagrant, is important, and should be borne in mind as a leading thread in the consideration of the Assistance of France, in contrast with the poor-laws of England. Three great centres of authority control the poor population. The Assistance Publique governs the poor, young and old, valid and invalid (save the insane), and relieves them. The prefect of police takes the beggars and vagrants in hand. The prefect of the department of the Seine-has direct authority over the pauper insane, although they

*Among the edicts of Francis I. was one, signed at Villers-Cotterets, for the general reform of justice, in August 1539. Challamel, in his "Mémoires du Peuple Français,' notes: "The police were vigorous against beggars (or caïmands) and vagrants in the sixteenth century. The authorities did their utmost to break up their refuges. They used to sleep in the boats on the Seine; but they were driven thence. At the same time public workshops were established, whither the valid beggars were led in chains. The men were punished with the galleys; the women were whipped."

are chiefly in the two great pauper establishments of Paris-Bicêtre and La Salpétrière. These three centres acting in harmony make the administration of the law searching, nay, completely operative; and hence the impossibility of finding in Paris parallels to the scandalous workhouse scenes which happen in London-where the President of the Local Government Board appears to the orderly French mind a helpless lord of misrule.

Through double doors, massively fastened, I was led by my guide-obviously an old soldier, and formidable and uncompromising still in appearanceon my way to the director, to whom I was to submit my card of admission to view. I entered a stunted, shambling, ragged quadrangle. The buildings and the half-cultivated open space looked like the débris of some ancient charity-alms-houses that had suffered severely in income. The warder at once adopted an apologetic tone; guessing that I should be struck with the irregularity and shiftless look of these beggars' barracks, about which a solitary jackdaw was hopping, completing the picture. He explained that it was a very ancient place; that it had never been intended by the architect for the purpose to which it was now applied; that it was full of insuperable inconveniences; and that another maison de repression was on the cards, a model one like those which have been built of late.

The director gave me a courteous reception, and