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Camden was a depressing region of low, marshy land, its streets unpaved and without gas, the gutters full of frozen, stagnant water. He inquired the way to the Reverend Mr.
"I do not think Cadet-Cassis so very bad," answered Gervaise, and she asked him about his work. How long should he be employed on the new hospital? "Oh," he answered, "there was never any lack of work." He had always more than he could do. He should remain in that shop at least a year, for he had yards and yards of gutters to make.
It was late in the fall, but there was still short sweet winter grass to be found along the gutters. For a while he nibbled at this hungrily. Then a queer idea came to Skipper. Perhaps the passing of a smartly groomed saddle-horse was responsible. At any rate, Skipper left off nibbling grass. He hobbled out to the edge of the road, turned so as to face the opposite side, and held up his head.
Besides, contrary to Rollo's hastily formed opinion, there ought not to be any gutters in such a town as this, as far as the streets are perfectly level, from end to end; if gutters were made the water would not run in them.
Carlyle, in later years, designated the voice of France as "a confused babblement from the gutters" and "scarcely human"; "A country indeed with its head cut off"; but this quotation does not reach some of the picturesque heights of nautical language that was invented by Nelson to describe his view of them.
The fascination of the Sands was greatly enhanced by the numerous birds which at all times frequented them, in search of the abundant food which lay buried along the edges of the muddy gutters. There were thousands of sandpipers in enormous flocks, mixed with king plovers, dunlins, and turnstones, which followed the ebb tides, and returned again in whirling clouds before the oncoming floods.
Windows showed dim candles, in the distance a sharp cry broke the silence and then fell away again. The street was very narrow and from the running gutters there stole into the air the odour of stale cabbage. "This is the 'ouse." Stephen stopped. Somewhere, above their heads, a child was crying. A light flashed in the upper windows, stayed for a moment, and disappeared.
Trees hollowed out and spanned from field to field served as gutters for irrigation; shepherds clad in white felt blankets sat huddled upon the ground behind huge boulders, oblivious of time and of the boisterous wind, while their sheep and goats grubbed away on the scanty grass the moorland provided; high up we saw forest fires, making the earth black and desolate; ruins almost everywhere recalled to one's mind the image of a past prosperity, which now were replaced by traces of misery, exterior influences which seemed to breed upon the traveler a deep discouragement.
"Then I wrapped myself in the quilt and sat down to wait; but I got asleep, and I dreamed I saw her; she had wings to each side of her, and she flew over the tops of all those houses and made them turn white like the snow looks when it is coming down before it drops into the gutters. Wasn't that queer? Well, some noise woke me up.
"'Why, this is nectar! cried the Viscount, having tasted. 'And do you tell me that those ignorant louts poured six hogsheads of it to waste? "'The gutters ran with it, monseigneur! Rhone wine, that even at four livres the hogshead could not be sold at a profit. "'Pardieu! The Viscount knitted his brow.
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