Time: 3.30 p.m.Here lives a blind matchbox-maker and his wife with their seven children.

The father has gone to take seven gross of boxes to the factory, for the mother cannot easily climb up and down the stone stairs of the Bastille.

So she sits everlastingly at the boxes, the beds are covered with them, the floor is covered with them, and the air is thick with unpleasant moisture.
One, two, three, four, there they go over her shoulder to the bed or floor; on the other side of the table sits a child of four, who, with all the apathy of an adult if not with equal celerity, gums or pastes the labels for his mother.

The work must be "got in," and the child has been kept at home to take his share in the family toil.
In this Bastille the children of the underworld live and die, for death reaps here his richest harvest.

Never mind! the funeral of one child is only a pageant for others.