And others tossed restlessly, still struggling in their slumber against fatigue and cold and hunger, which pursued them like nightmares of monstrous shape.

And from all those human beings, stretched there like wounded after a battle, from all that ambulance of life reeking with a stench of rottenness and death, there ascended a nausea born of revolt, the vengeance-prompting thought of all the happy chambers where, at that same hour, the wealthy loved or rested in fine linen and costly lace.* * Even the oldest Paris night refuges, which are the outcome of private philanthropy--L'Oeuvre de l'Hospitalite de Nuit-- have only been in existence some fourteen or fifteen years.
Before that time, and from the period of the great Revolution forward, there was absolutely no place, either refuge, asylum, or workhouse, in the whole of that great city of wealth and pleasure, where the houseless poor could crave a night's shelter.

The various royalist, imperialist and republican governments and municipalities of modern France have often been described as 'paternal,' but no governments and municipalities in the whole civilised world have done less for the very poor.

The official Poor Relief Board--L'Assistance Publique--has for fifty years been a by-word, a mockery and a sham, in spite of its large revenue.

And this neglect of the very poor has been an important factor in every French revolution.