A shadowy form, something which seemed to be a thin, black-skirted woman, brushed against them.

And all of a sudden they were surprised to find it was a priest.
"What, is it you, Monsieur l'Abbe Froment ?" exclaimed Gerard.

"At this time of night?
And in this part of Paris ?" Thereupon Pierre, without venturing either to express his own astonishment at finding them there themselves, or to ask them what they were doing, explained that he had been belated through accompanying Abbe Rose on a visit to a night refuge.

Ah! to think of all the frightful want which at last drifted to those pestilential dormitories where the stench had almost made him faint! To think of all the weariness and despair which there sank into the slumber of utter prostration, like that of beasts falling to the ground to sleep off the abominations of life! No name could be given to the promiscuity; poverty and suffering were there in heaps, children and men, young and old, beggars in sordid rags, beside the shameful poor in threadbare frock-coats, all the waifs and strays of the daily shipwrecks of Paris life, all the laziness and vice, and ill-luck and injustice which the torrent rolls on, and throws off like scum.

Some slept on, quite annihilated, with the faces of corpses.
Others, lying on their backs with mouths agape, snored loudly as if still venting the plaint of their sorry life.