There was a stampede to the spot, but by the
time the crowd had gathered the breeze had freshened, and it was
impossible to see with any distinctness below the surface of the water. On being questioned the woman described what she had seen, but in such
an incoherent way that the whole thing was put down as an effect of
imagination; had it not been for the children’s report she would not
have been credited at all. Her semi-hysterical statement that what she
saw was “like a pig with the entrails out” was only thought anything of
by an old coastguard, who shook his head but did not make any remark. For the remainder of the daylight this man was seen always on the bank,
looking into the water, but always with disappointment manifest on his
face. Eric arose early on the next morning—he had not slept all night, and it
was a relief to him to move about in the light. He shaved himself with
a hand that did not tremble, and dressed himself in his wedding
clothes. There was a haggard look on his face, and he seemed as though
he had grown years older in the last few days. Still there was a wild,
uneasy light of triumph in his eyes, and he kept murmuring to himself
over and over again:

“This is my wedding-day! Abel cannot claim her now—living or
dead!—living or dead! Living or dead!” He sat in his arm-chair, waiting
with an uncanny quietness for the church hour to arrive. When the bell
began to ring he arose and passed out of his house, closing the door
behind him. He looked at the river and saw the tide had just turned. In
the church he sat with Sarah and her mother, holding Sarah’s hand
tightly in his all the time, as though he feared to lose her. When the
service was over they stood up together, and were married in the
presence of the entire congregation; for no one left the church. Both
made the responses clearly—Eric’s being even on the defiant side. When
the wedding was over Sarah took her husband’s arm, and they walked away
together, the boys and younger girls being cuffed by their elders into
a decorous behaviour, for they would fain have followed close behind
their heels. The way from the church led down to the back of Eric’s cottage, a
narrow passage being between it and that of his next neighbour. When
the bridal couple had passed through this the remainder of the
congregation, who had followed them at a little distance, were startled
by a long, shrill scream from the bride. They rushed through the
passage and found her on the bank with wild eyes, pointing to the river
bed opposite Eric Sanson’s door. The falling tide had deposited there the body of Abel Behenna stark
upon the broken rocks. The rope trailing from its waist had been
twisted by the current round the mooring post, and had held it back
whilst the tide had ebbed away from it. The right elbow had fallen in a
chink in the rock, leaving the hand outstretched toward Sarah, with the
open palm upward as though it were extended to receive hers, the pale
drooping fingers open to the clasp. All that happened afterwards was never quite known to Sarah Sanson. Whenever she would try to recollect there would become a buzzing in her
ears and a dimness in her eyes, and all would pass away. The only thing
that she could remember of it all—and this she never forgot—was Eric’s
breathing heavily, with his face whiter than that of the dead man, as
he muttered under his breath:

“Devil’s help! Devil’s faith! Devil’s price!”




The Burial of the Rats


Leaving Paris by the Orleans road, cross the Enceinte, and, turning to
the right, you find yourself in a somewhat wild and not at all savoury
district. Right and left, before and behind, on every side rise great
heaps of dust and waste accumulated by the process of time. Paris has its night as well as its day life, and the sojourner who
enters his hotel in the Rue de Rivoli or the Rue St. Honore late at
night or leaves it early in the morning, can guess, in coming near
Montrouge—if he has not done so already—the purpose of those great
waggons that look like boilers on wheels which he finds halting
everywhere as he passes. Every city has its peculiar institutions created out of its own needs;
and one of the most notable institutions of Paris is its rag-picking
population. In the early morning—and Parisian life commences at an
early hour—may be seen in most streets standing on the pathway opposite
every court and alley and between every few houses, as still in some
American cities, even in parts of New York, large wooden boxes into
which the domestics or tenement-holders empty the accumulated dust of
the past day. Round these boxes gather and pass on, when the work is
done, to fresh fields of labour and pastures new, squalid
hungry-looking men and women, the implements of whose craft consist of
a coarse bag or basket slung over the shoulder and a little rake with
which they turn over and probe and examine in the minutest manner the
dustbins. They pick up and deposit in their baskets, by aid of their
rakes, whatever they may find, with the same facility as a Chinaman
uses his chopsticks. Paris is a city of centralisation—and centralisation and classification
are closely allied. In the early times, when centralisation is becoming
a fact, its forerunner is classification. All things which are similar
or analogous become grouped together, and from the grouping of groups
rises one whole or central point. We see radiating many long arms with
innumerable tentaculae, and in the centre rises a gigantic head with a
comprehensive brain and keen eyes to look on every side and ears
sensitive to hear—and a voracious mouth to swallow. Other cities resemble all the birds and beasts and fishes whose
appetites and digestions are normal. Paris alone is the analogical
apotheosis of the octopus. Product of centralisation carried to an _ad
absurdum_, it fairly represents the devil fish; and in no respects is
the resemblance more curious than in the similarity of the digestive
apparatus. Those intelligent tourists who, having surrendered their individuality
into the hands of Messrs. Cook or Gaze, “do” Paris in three days, are
often puzzled to know how it is that the dinner which in London would
cost about six shillings, can be had for three francs in a café in the
Palais Royal. They need have no more wonder if they will but consider
the classification which is a theoretic speciality of Parisian life,
and adopt all round the fact from which the chiffonier has his genesis. The Paris of 1850 was not like the Paris of to-day, and those who see
the Paris of Napoleon and Baron Hausseman can hardly realise the
existence of the state of things forty-five years ago. Amongst other things, however, which have not changed are those
districts where the waste is gathered. Dust is dust all the world over,
in every age, and the family likeness of dust-heaps is perfect. The
traveller, therefore, who visits the environs of Montrouge can go go
back in fancy without difficulty to the year 1850.