But afterwards he bestirred himself every day, leaving home in the morning and not returning until night.

As the three rooms no longer sufficed for the asylum, he rented the first floor of the house, reserving for himself a chamber in which ultimately he often slept.

And all his modest income was expended there, in the prompt succouring of poor children; and the old priest, delighted, touched to tears by the young devoted help which had come to him from heaven, would often embrace Pierre, weeping, and call him a child of God.
It was then that Pierre knew want and wretchedness--wicked, abominable wretchedness; then that he lived amidst it for two long years.

The acquaintance began with the poor little beings whom he picked up on the pavements, or whom kind-hearted neighbours brought to him now that the asylum was known in the district--little boys, little girls, tiny mites stranded on the streets whilst their fathers and mothers were toiling, drinking, or dying.

The father had often disappeared, the mother had gone wrong, drunkenness and debauchery had followed slack times into the home; and then the brood was swept into the gutter, and the younger ones half perished of cold and hunger on the footways, whilst their elders betook themselves to courses of vice and crime.