Excerpt from St. Simon's Niece: A Novel

A crooked old man, and a crooked small boy, who looked-older than one of the patriarchs, were quarreling fiercely in an unintelligible patois. So far as could be judged from their gestures, the difference of opinion had arisen in regard to the carrying of their joint property, a hand-organ and a monkey, each preferring the latter for his burden.

The organ, a very Methuselah of its kind, stood in a door-way, the monkey, rather more timeworn and wicked in appearance than either of his owners, had perched himself on its top, and munched an apple covertly, while the contest waxed hotter, evincing a high-bred indifference as to which of the combatants had the honor of his society.

An ancient clothes-woman, a peripatetic pyramid of rags, crooned a sort of rhyme in a bass voice that she seemed to have borrowed from a giant. Dirty little children squabbled in the gutter. An omnibus toiled up the hill, having a third horse attached for the ascent, and the driver and two other men belabored the unfortunate beasts, and made as much noise as a troop of hyenas. Idlers in blouses lounged about the entrance of the cabaret at the corner, as earnest in discussion as if the fate of the nation depended on their efforts. A young woman in doubtfully clean finery halted with her right foot poised on a curb-stone, awaiting an opportunity to cross the street, and displaying her ankles while she wait ed, for the benefit of any passers-by who might think them worth regarding.

It was a street in the heart of Paris, but a region despised by wandering English and Americans - far up in the Quartier Montmartre, where the hill was most precipitous, and the trottoirs so slippery that an unwary promenader took three steps backward to one in advance, apparently indulging in some remarkable kind of pirouette. The tall houses, too, looked just ready to slide down the descent, and seemed frowning darkly at the prospect of a tumble.

The last rays of the setting sun lighted up the scene, and rendered the squalor and noise more insupportable than usual. The fruit and vegetable venders screamed with renewed energy. The hurry and animation increased, as though every body had a host of things to accomplish before the night arrived, and yet no one did any thing but shriek and dance about in an insane dervish sort of fashion.

At one the windows of an apartment au second in the largest and most habitable-looking dwelling, Fannie St. Simon stood and surveyed the scene, and gazed away through the distance at a pile of gorgeous-tinted clouds, wishing drearily that they might burst into a fiery storm, and complete the ruin attempted by the Communards a few months previous.

She made a very pretty picture, framed among the dingy draperies, with a scarlet shawl thrown over her shoulders, for October had come, and the evening air fell chill and sharp. But her personal appearance, important as she had all her life been in the habit of considering it, was a matter of utter indifference just now.

The light faded rapidly out of the west, the noises below ceased to distract her attention. Fanny's gaze settled upon a black and white lettered sign near the comer, which marked a montde-piété, and her face grew rather sullen as she remembered that in a couple of days she must inevitably make acquaintance with the mysteries of its interior.

She turned from the window, and resumed her contemplation of such valuables as she possessed. An hour or two before, she had spread the trinkets on the table, to decide which among them should be first offered in the sacrifice grown imperative. There was a tolerable store of jewelry - articles of value, too - but they would bring little enough under the rigid estimate of a French pawnbroker. She turned over the glittering baubles, reca