This man is quite remarkable; and a friend, speaking of him to me, and of his well-known enthusiasm for rag-pickers and their like, told me he once said to her: “See you, when once you get into the heart of that class, you can’t endure any other. It becomes a passion.” And I can well understand it, from all I have seen of the humbler classes of Paris. There is a fulness of life, of vitality, of inarticulate, unconscious goodness about them that puts you in sympathy with Tolstoiïsm. But instead of the mysticism, the intensity of the Russian character, you have here that irresistible French gaiety, which is not by any means so light as it is said to be. Action is its virtue. Its mental horizon is brightened by a personal charm of character, as a twilight sky is enriched by an arch of radiant colour. In spite of the false romancers, morality is in the air, everywhere about us. In these humbler walks I refer to, pure girls, faithful husbands, devoted wives, hard-working, honest sons and daughters abound, and the force, as well as the weakness of all may be found in the love of home and family. The temple of self-respect is lit with the unquenchable flames of independence. All these admirable “little people” work so hard and so contentedly that they may enjoy the delights of freedom and a hearth, and they work the more contentedly, without embittered or soured temper, because they have the inestimable art of living and enjoying themselves when they leave aside work. The lower down you go among the people, the greater the readiness to open the purse, and a workman bent on a holiday will not hesitate to pay twenty or thirty francs for a picnic carriage for the day, and fill the hamper with an abundance of good fare and drink. I remember once hearing a well-to-do woman violently complain because her coachman’s brother-in-law had paid such a price for a vehicle to take a marriage party out into the country. I could not share her indignation, to her disgust. The French people work so hard, and so gallantly, and so well, that I think they earn their right to an outbreak now and then. They at least pay for their pleasures and dissipations with the sweat of their brow, and we who profit by their labour owe them all thanks and indulgence. [Illustration] CHAPTER XII ORGANISED PHILANTHROPY AND PUBLIC ASSISTANCE