“The idea that there is no equality, even when you are dead! Just look at Père-Lachaise! The great, those who are rich, are up above, in the acacia alley, which is paved. They can reach it in a carriage. The little people, the poor, the unhappy, well, what of them? they are put down below, where the mud is up to your knees, in the damp places. They are put there so that they will decay the sooner! You cannot go to see them without sinking into the earth.”

He paused, smote the table with his fist, and added, as he ground his teeth:⁠—

“Oh! I could eat the whole world!”

A big woman, who might be forty years of age, or a hundred, was crouching near the fireplace on her bare heels.