“If the forms of justice where we are now going,” said Duchesne, “be divested of much of their pomp and ceremony, be assured of one thing,--it is not at the expense of the more material essence. Of all the police tribunals about Paris, this obscure den in the Bue de Dix Sous is the most effective. Situated in a quarter where crime is as rife as fever in the Pontine Marshes, it has become acquainted with the haunts and habits of the lowest class in Paris,--the lowest class, probably, in any city of Europe. Watching with parental solicitude, it tracks the criminal from his first step in vice to his last deed in crime; from his petty theft to his murder. Knowing the necessities to which poverty impels men, and studying with attention the impulses that grow up amid despair and hunger, it sees motives through a mist of intervening circumstances that would baffle less subtle observers, and can trace the tortuous windings of crime where no other sight could find the clew. Is it not strange to think with what ingenuity men will investigate the minute anatomy of vice, and how little they will do to apply this knowledge to its remedy? Like the surgeon, enamored of his operating skill, he would rather exhibit his dexterity in the amputation, than his science in the saving, of the limb. Such is the bureau of the police in the poorer quarters. In the more fashionable ones it takes a higher flight; amusing the world with its scenes, alternately humorous and pathetic, it forms a kind of feature in the literature of the period, and is the only reading of thousands. In these places the _commissaire_ is usually a _bon vivant_ and a wit; despising the miserable function of administering the law, he takes his seat upon the bench to cap jokes with the witnesses, puzzle the complainant, and embarrass the prisoner. To the reporters alone is he civil; and in return, his poor witticisms appear in the morning papers, with the usual 'loud laughter' that never existed save in type.” As we thus chatted, we entered a quarter of dirty and narrow streets, inhabited by a poor-looking, squalid population. The women, with little to mark their sex in their coarse, heavy countenances, wore colored kerchiefs on their heads in lieu of a cap, and were for the most part without shoes or stockings. The men, a brutalized, stupid race, sat smoking in the doorways, scarcely lifting their eyes as we passed; or some were eating a coarse morsel of black rye bread, which, by their eagerness in devouring it, seemed an unusual delicacy. “You scarcely believed there was such poverty in Paris,” said he; “but this is by no means the worst of the quarter. Though M. de Champagny, in his late report, makes no mention of these 'signs of prosperity,' we are now entering the region where, even in noonday, the passage is deemed perilous; but the number of police agents on duty to-day will make the journey a safe one.”