A narrow street in the heart of Paris; houses on each side, towering up so high that the sunshine never reached the earth upon which they stood; and those who lived in the lower stories scarcely knew what it was to see a gleam of pure light from Christmas to Christmas. The houses, solid, old, and moss-grown at the base, were crowded with human beings, who would gladly have worked for a livelihood, had any work been attainable in Paris that cruel season. But there was stagnation in trade, and distress in all the land. Those who depended on toil for their daily bread, found all their efforts insufficient to appease the incessant cravings of hunger, which was a terrible disease all over France that year. But there was no work. Those who controlled capital held it close, thus paralyzing trade and adding to the general distress. Thousands and thousands of those who longed to be, in fact, the working people of Paris, suffered terribly for food. This want was felt all through the neighborhood we speak of. Scarcely a family within sight of it had enjoyed a sufficiency of food for weeks. Poverty drove them from story to story, while it kept them almost too weak to climb the stairs as they multiplied upward. In a small room, under the roof of one of these houses, two women sat in idleness. They would have been glad to work, but that poor privilege was denied to them. They would more gladly have eaten something, but all the provisions they had in the room would scarcely have set forth the ghost of a meal. Still this destitution was borne with a sort of cheerful patience, which nothing but a native of France could have maintained under such circumstances. There was no abandonment to despondency—hunger had, sometimes, made these two females serious, but seldom morose; their burden of life grew heavier day by day, but up to this time it had not broken down the patience which is the most beautiful part of womanhood. They sat together in the darkening room, two worn and half-famished creatures, wondering if the morrow would have something in store for them with a sort of forlorn hope, which neither had the spirit to express. These two suffering women were mother and daughter; yet the mother was not at full mid-age, and a powerful constitution made her seem younger than she really was. She was handsome, too, spite of the famine that had pinched her features, and given that hungry light to her eyes. A large, fine woman, of the English type, full of natural health and energy this person had been only a year before; now she was subdued and broken down by sheer physical want. The young girl who sat near her was a fair, gentle blonde, very thin, white and delicate: her great, blue eyes enlarged with craving; and her mouth tremulous, like that of an infant denied of its innocent wishes.