I was walking along the Rue des Martins. I was thoughtful, for I had just been witness to a sight that greatly moved me. My duties as a reporter for one of the large Paris dailies had taken me to Havre just as the ship came in which brought the Communists home from exile, and, hardened as I confess myself to be to the more frequent aspects of human suffering, the sight of those men crowding forward to catch the first glimpse of the friends who had come to meet them, touched me with a feeling that was not unlike compassion. I was thinking of them and wondering what sort of fate awaited the older men I saw there, when a sudden cry from over my head startled me from my musings, and looking up, I saw a woman peering out of the top window of a wretched apartment.
She showed such signs of distress in her countenance that I at once knew something terrible had occurred within, and foreseeing matter for my next article, I immediately entered the house.
I found myself confronted by frightened faces everywhere. All the inmates knew that something was wrong on the top floor, but no one knew just what. They followed me when they saw me determined to find out. The consequence was that a small crowd pressed behind me as I mounted the last stair; a crowd that seemed to awe if not alarm the trembling woman who awaited me at the top, for she started back as she saw it, muttering to herself:
“_Mon Dieu!_ Elise never had so many visitors before!”
[Illustration: “THERE, STRETCHED ON HER BED.”]
A door swinging on its hinges at the right of this woman at once attracted my attention. Advancing with small ceremony, I threw it open. I found my expectations more than realized. On the bed before me lay the outstretched form of a woman, the pallor and fixedness of whose face bespoke death. Not a natural death either, for she was dressed as if she had just come in from the street, with the exception of her bonnet, which lay on the floor beside her, where it had evidently been flung by a careless hand. Otherwise the room was in perfect order, I may even say in holiday order. From the work neatly folded on the shelf to the small bunch of fresh flowers that adorned a table set out with an untouched meal——a meal which even in the hurried glance I gave it I saw was arranged for two——all bespoke one of those rare days of rest and relaxation which now and then enter a French working-woman’s life.