Whether as regards the propagation of good deeds, the support of the young, the saving of life, the bestowal of pecuniary help, or the promotion of guilds, pages and pages would have been needed merely to particularise the extraordinary vegetation of charity that sprouted between the paving-stones of Paris with so fine a vigour, in which goodness of soul was mingled with social vanity.

Still that could not matter, since charity redeemed and purified all.

But how terrible the proposition that this charity was a useless mockery! What! after so many centuries of Christian charity not a sore had healed.

Misery had only grown and spread, irritated even to rage.

Incessantly aggravated, the evil was reaching the point when it would be impossible to tolerate it for another day, since social injustice was neither arrested nor even diminished thereby.