Her inability to procure models at home also suggested to her another expedient, the adoption of which shows how earnest was her determination to overcome the obstacles poverty had placed in the way of her studies. The slaughtering and preparing of animals for the Paris market is confined to a few _abattoirs_, great establishments on the outskirts of the city, placed under the supervision of the municipal authorities. Each of these establishments contains extensive inclosures, in which are penned thousands of lowing and bleating victims, waiting their turn to be led to the shambles. To one of these--the _abattoir du Roule_--had Rosa the courage to go daily for many months, surmounting alike the repugnance which such a locality naturally inspired, and her equally natural hesitation to place herself in contact with the crowd of butchers and drovers who filled it. Seated on a bundle of hay, with her colors beside her, she painted on from morning till dusk, not unfrequently forgetting the bit of bread in her pocket, so absorbed would she become in the study of the varied types that rendered the courts and stables of this establishment so invaluable a field of observation for her. Not content with drawing the occupants of the _abattoir_ in their pens, far from the sickening horror of the shambles, she felt the necessity of studying their attitudes under the terror and agony of the death-stroke, and compelled herself to make repeated visits to the slaughter-house; looking on scenes whose repulsiveness was rendered doubly painful to her by her affectionate sympathy with the brute creation. In the evening, on her return home, her hands, face, and clothes were usually spotted all over by the flies, so numerous wherever animals are congregated. Such was the respect with which she inspired the rude companions by whom she was surrounded, and who would often beg to see her sketches, which they regarded with the most naïve admiration, that nothing ever occurred to annoy her in the slightest degree during her long sojourns in the crowded precincts of the _abattoir_.