The Seine, spanned by five bridges encumbered with low vessels moored head and stern, out of which the washer-women cleaned their dirty linen, resembled a wide stagnant ditch. The fall being slight, the river but leisurely carried off the filth from the sewers, the soap from the washing-boats, and the dye that flowed into it from the factories. Add to this the slops and sewage of the Hôtel Dieu, which contained six thousand patients suffering from all the loathsome disorders to which human nature is subject, and one can appreciate the _bon-mot_ of Foote, when he was asked by a Parisian whether he had such a river in London, ‘No, we had such an one, but we stopped it up (alluding to the Fleet Ditch); at present, we have only the Thames.’ Beneath the Pont Nôtre Dame, a net was every night let down to stop the bodies of drowned men, and of such as were murdered and thrown into the river. At seven in the morning, twice a week, a bell was rung through the streets for the inhabitants to sweep before their houses; but for this, there would have been no possibility of walking, there being no foot-way. Gabrielle and the little brown Percenez entered Paris on the 28th of April. The streets, crowded with people, astonished the girl. Her eyes turned with wonder from side to side. The height of the houses, the intricacy of the streets, the antiquity of the buildings, the number of crossings, shops, coffee-houses, stalls, were such as she had never seen before. Her ears were assailed by the cries of fruiterers and pedlars of all sorts with their carts, and by the rattle and rumble of wheels upon the stone pavement. As a coach drove by, the girl and her conductor stepped up against the wall, there being no footway; when a couple of carriages met, it was often difficult to avoid being run over. The hackney coaches, distinguished then, as they are now, by numbers in yellow painted on their backs, jolted past in shoals. Uneasy, dirty vehicles they were, with a board slung behind the coach-box, upon which the driver stood. Trim little sedan chairs on wheels some thirty inches high, dragged by a man between shafts like the handles of a wheelbarrow, dived in and out among the stalls and carriages, and rattled jauntily and expeditiously along. Sometimes a grand coach, behind which were suspended footmen in livery, with long white staves, rolled down solemnly and slowly, scattering the hucksters and sedan chairs, as a hawk disperses a flight of sparrows. ‘Do you notice, Gabrielle,’ said Percenez, ‘the wheels of the private carriages are girt with tires made in small pieces, whilst the hired fiacres have their wheels girt with hoops of iron in one piece? You would be surprised, little girl, how much envy the jointed tires excite; for only gentlemen of birth are entitled to use them.’