It was too much to believe that the content, the fidelity to the job were universal. Nevertheless, it was sufficient to cement the laborious poor into a powerful and recognized class, a class with traditions, customs, recognized relations to other classes, having its own manner of homes, amusements, worship; a class self-respecting, jealous of its prerogatives, and able in need to protect itself.
But the multitude of hard-working and fairly satisfied men and women were not all the poor with whom I came close. There were those who could find no work; there were many of them, for the long world depression of the nineties was on its way. The winter of ’91 and ’92 was a cruel one, and the museums, libraries, lecture rooms, churches where I went about my daily duties were swarmed with poor souls trying to deceive the guardians into thinking that they had come to study pictures, read books, listen to lectures, to confess their sins or listen to mass. The guardians only saw them when they became a crowd or attempted to camp for the day. Most pathetic to me were their efforts to make furtive toilets, taking a comb from a pocket to smooth tangled hair, scissors to cut the fringe from a frayed cuff.
There were soup kitchens to keep them from starving, though many a one starved or froze or ended his misery in the Seine that winter. At one of these kitchens I officiated for a brief time. It was run by the McAll Mission in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. I was not there as a Samaritan but as a reporter looking for copy. What could I do for them but tell Americans what a few Americans were doing in Paris to ease the vast misery? It might bring a few sous for soup. I believe it did.
But they pulled less strongly on my sympathy than a class of the poor which I found to be in our Quarter—men and women no longer young, past the employing age, who lived alone on tiny incomes, sometimes the fruit of their own past thrift, sometimes an inheritance, again the gift of a friend. I watched and speculated about how they did it, the more seriously because I asked myself if the day might be coming when I should belong to this class. If I ever did, I hoped I could carry it off with as much dignity as the one called the Countess on our street. She lived _sous les toits_ in a high house opposite me, a tall, erect, white-haired woman in a gown and cape of faded and patched silk which still showed its quality as did its wearer. More than once I watched her stop late at night at the garbage can on the sidewalk opposite, turning over its contents. Many of the tradespeople seemed to feel that she honored them when she came in to buy an occasional egg or apple. She was so gracious, so completely _grande dame_. One day I heard the woman from whom I bought my café au lait say: “Will not Madame honor me by trying my coffee? It is still hot.” She was pouring out a cup as she said it, and the Countess with a benignant smile said, “If that will give you pleasure, my good Marie.” She needed it. Marie knew that, but Marie was more than paid by that smile. “It is a great honor,” she told me lest, being a foreigner, I did not understand the Countess, “to have so great a lady come into one’s shop.” There it was again, another standard than money, the standard of class, breeding, cultivation, the grand manner.