Other distant sounds responded to the joyous strains of the grave diggers; public-houses had sprung up in the neighborhood of the churchyards, and the drivers of the dead, when they had “set down their customers,” as they jocosely expressed themselves, enriched with their unusual gratuities, feasted and made merry like lords; dawn often found them with a glass in their hands, and a jest on their lips; and, strange to say, among these funeral satellites, who breathed the very atmosphere of the disease, the mortality was scarcely perceptible.  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 words, traced in large characters.[37]

“Vengeance!  Vengeance!

“The Working-men carried to the hospitals are poisoned, because the number of patients is too great; every night, Boats filled with corpses, drop down the Seine.

“Vengeance and Death to the murderers of the People!”

Two men, enveloped in cloaks, and half-hidden in the deep shadow of the vault, were listening with anxious curiosity to the threatening murmur, which rose with increasing force from among a tumultuous assembly, grouped around the Hospital.  Soon, cries of “Death to the doctors!—­Vengeance!” reached the ears of the persons who were in ambush under the arch.