You expected to see great splendour here, and you find only misery.

The government allows my father but a small salary, and there are nine of us.

As we must attend church on Sundays and holidays in a style proper to our condition, we are often compelled to go without our dinner, in order to get out of pledge the clothes which urgent need too often obliges us to part with, and which we pledge anew on the following day.

If we did not attend mass, the curate would strike our names off the list of those who share the alms of the Confraternity of the Poor, and those alms alone keep us afloat." What a sad tale! She had guessed rightly.

I was touched, but rather with shame than true emotion.