Three types of poverty (from "The Two Brothers"):
In Paris, there are three distinct classes of poverty.
First, the poverty of the man who preserves appearances,
and to whom a future still belongs; this is
the poverty of young men, artists, men of the world, momentarily
unfortunate. The outward signs of their distress are not visible,
except under the microscope of a close observer. These persons are the
equestrian order of poverty; they continue to drive about in
cabriolets. In the second order we find old men who have become
indifferent to everything, and, in June, put the cross of the Legion
of honor on alpaca overcoats; that is the poverty of small incomes,--
of old clerks, who live at Sainte-Perine and care no longer about
their outward man. Then comes, in the third place, poverty in rags,
the poverty of the people, the poverty that is poetic; which Callot,
Hogarth, Murillo, Charlet, Raffet, Gavarni, Meissonier, Art itself
adores and cultivates, especially during the carnival. The man in whom
poor Agathe thought she recognized her son was astride the last two
classes of poverty. She saw the ragged neck-cloth, the scurfy hat, the
broken and patched boots, the threadbare coat, whose buttons had shed
their mould, leaving the empty shrivelled pod dangling in congruity
with the torn pockets and the dirty collar. Scraps of flue were in the
creases of the coat, which showed plainly the dust that filled it. The
man drew from the pockets of his seam-rent iron-gray trousers a pair
of hands as black as those of a mechanic. A knitted woollen waistcoat,
discolored by use, showed below the sleeves of his coat, and above the
trousers, and no doubt served instead of a shirt. Philippe wore a
green silk shade with a wire edge over his eyes; his head, which was
nearly bald, the tints of his skin, and his sunken face too plainly
revealed that he was just leaving the terrible Hopital du Midi. His
blue overcoat, whitened at the seams, was still decorated with the
ribbon of his cross; and the passers-by looked at the hero, doubtless
some victim of the government, with curiosity and commiseration; the
rosette attracted notice, and the fiercest "ultra" was jealous for the
honor of the Legion. In those days, however much the government
endeavored to bring the Order into disrepute by bestowing its cross
right and left, there were not fifty-three thousand persons decorated.
(
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