tible. In the dark,
squalid quarters of the town, where, surrounded by infectious
exhalations, the indigent population was crowded together, and miserable
beings, exhausted by severe privation, were "bespoke" by the cholera, as
it was energetically said at the time, not only individuals, but whole
families, were carried off in a few hours; and yet, sometimes, oh,
merciful Providence! one or two little children were left in the cold and
empty room, after the father and mother, brother and sister, had been
taken away in their shells.

Frequently, houses which had swarmed with hard working laborers, were
obliged to be shut up for want of tenants; in one day, they had been
completely cleared by this terrible visitation, from the cellars, where
little chimney-sweepers slept upon straw, to the garret, on whose cold
brick floor lay stretched some wan and half-naked being, without work and
without bread. But, of all the wards of Paris, that which perhaps
presented the most frightful spectacle during the progress of the
cholera, was the City; and in the City, the square before the cathedral
of Notre-Dame was almost every day the theatre of dreadful scenes: for
this locality was frequently thronged with those who conveyed the sick
from the neighboring streets to the Great Hospital. The cholera had not
one aspect, but a thousand. So that one week after Rodin had been
suddenly attacked, several events combining the horrible and the
grotesque occurred in the square of Notre Dame.

Instead of the Rue d'Arcole, which now leads directly to the square, it
was then approached on one side, by a mean, narrow lane, like all the
other streets of the City, and terminating in a dark, low archway. Upon
entering the square the principal door of the huge Cathedral was to the
left of the spectator, and facing him were the Hospital buildings. A
little beyond, was an opening which gave to view a portion of the parapet
of the Quay Notre-Dame. A placard had been recently stuck on the
discolored and sunken wail of the archway; it contained these