And on the way she furnished some particulars about the Cité de Naples, which her husband had inherited from an uncle. This husband probably was dead; no one had ever known him, and she never spoke of him except to explain the origin of her property. A sorry business, which would be the death of her, she said, for she found more trouble than profit in it, especially now that the Prefecture was tormenting her, sending inspectors to require repairs and improvements, under the pretext that people were dying like flies on her premises. However, she energetically refused to spend a copper. Would they not soon require chimney-pieces ornamented with mirrors in rooms which she let for two francs a week! But she did not speak of her own greediness in collecting the rents, throwing families into the street the moment they failed to pay the usual two francs in advance, doing her own police work, and so feared that beggars without a shelter would not have dared to sleep for nothing against one of her walls. With her heart oppressed, Madame Caroline examined the courtyard, a devastated piece of ground, full of mounds and hollows, and transformed by accumulated filth into a perfect cloaca. Everything was thrown into it; there was neither pit nor cesspool in the Cité, so that this yard had become an ever-growing dunghill, poisoning the air; and fortunately it was now cold weather, for on warm sunny days the stench generated pestilence. With anxious feet, Madame Caroline tried to avoid the heaps of vegetables and bones, while casting glances at the dwellings on either side. These were indescribable dens, some half tumbling down, others in ruins strengthened with the most extraordinary materials. Several were simply covered with tarred paper. Many had no doors, but afforded a glimpse of dark cave-like holes, whence came a nauseous breath of poverty. Families of eight and ten persons were huddled in these charnel-houses, often without even a bed--men, women, and children, rotting like decayed fruit, given over from early childhood to the most monstrous promiscuity. And thus bands of emaciated, puny brats, eaten up by disease, continually filled the courtyard, poor creatures growing on this dunghill like mushrooms. When an epidemic of typhoid fever or small-pox arose, it at once swept half the Cité into the cemetery.[18]