On other occasions, when she had some wine, she treated herself to a sop, a true parrot's pottage.

Two sous' worth of Italian cheese, bushels of white potatoes, quarts of dry beans, cooked in their own juice, these also were dainties she was not often able to indulge in now.

She came down to leavings from low eating dens, where for a sou she had a pile of fish-bones, mixed with the parings of moldy roast meat.

She fell even lower--she begged a charitable eating-house keeper to give her his customers' dry crusts, and she made herself a bread soup, letting the crusts simmer as long as possible on a neighbor's fire.

On the days when she was really hungry, she searched about with the dogs, to see what might be lying outside the tradespeople's doors before the dustmen went by; and thus at times she came across rich men's food, rotten melons, stinking mackerel and chops, which she carefully inspected for fear of maggots.
Yes, she had come to this.