From time out of mind the sage in velvet has serenely contemplated Diogenes in his tub; not that our philosopher seemed the treasurer of an Alexander!

Ranged at length in a long row, cripples, the blind, the young, the aged, it was a company of mendicants which eccentric painters would have given five years of life to have seen.  Except for consumptive coughs, the misstep of a wooden leg of which the clumsy ferule slipped on a cobblestone, and the querulous whimper of a child, half-starved and imperfectly swaddled in a tattered shawl, on a flaccid bosom, the mob were silent in an expectation as intense as the lookers-on.  The wind brought the whistle of the railway locomotives and the clanking of a steam-dredger in the river, like a giant toiling in massive chains.

For this platoon of vice and misery, crime and disorder, laziness and rapine, the stranger confidently expected to see a commander appear whose flashing, fearless eye, and upright, powerful frame, would account for the awe in which all were held.

What was his amazement, therefore, to perceive—­while a tremor of emotion thrilled the line and announced the commander whom all awaited—­a bent-up, scarcely human-shaped form, hardly to be acknowledged a woman’s.  It was enveloped in a heavily furred pelisse fitted for a man.

This singular object appeared up the trap of a cellarway, much like the opening of a sewer, on the opposite side of the street.  She proceeded to review the vagabonds and put questions and issue orders to each, which were received like mandates from Caesar by his legions.  The voice was fine and shrill, the movements betokened vigor, but the whole impression was that the female captain-general of the beggars of Munich was far from young.

In the obscurity, and keeping in the background as he did, it was not possible for the stranger to scan her features; besides, they were veiled by the long hair of a Polish hunter’s cap, with earflaps and a drooping foxtail, worn as the pompon but half-loosened in time.  The eyes that inspected the file of vagrants, shone with undiminished force, and when they fell on the burliest and most impudent, these became quiet and submissive.  In a word, the cohort of beggary yielded utter subserviency to this remarkable leader.

Questions and answers were uttered in a thieve’s jargon which were sealed letters to the eavesdropper, but it seemed to him that they all addressed her as Baboushka!  This struck him as more odd from its being a Slavonic title, meaning “grandmother.”  Was it possible that he had before him one of those prolific centenarians, truly a mother of the tribe, a gypsy queen to whom allegiance went undisputed and who rules the subterranean strata of society with fewer revolts against them than their sister rulers know, who sit on thrones in the fierce white light?

In any case, he was given no leisure for deciding the question, for an active urchin had whispered a word of caution which led the feminine general to direct a piercing glance toward him, and hasten to conclude her arrangements.  The line broke up into little groups, though most of the men went singly, and all tramped over the little foot-bridge, which swung under the unusual mass.