He led us through the neighbourhood of St. Giles, as he called it, which was only a few streets from where we stood. It seemed to me the most wretched and depraved district imaginable on this earth. No low quarter of Geneva, however ruinous, had the least resemblance to this foul and degrading patch of London. The streets were no more than paths of mud, or filth, where the effluent ran in rivulets from the ragged courtyards and alleys. The stench was indescribable. “Are we safe here?” I whispered to Westbrook.

“I am known. But if not-” He took from the interior pocket of his jacket a large knife with a bone handle and long blade. “This is what the French call couteau secret,” he said. “You cannot open it without being acquainted with the secret spring.”

“Have you ever used it?”

“Not yet. I keep it for the bloodhounds after me and my companions.”

There was a shriek from an upstairs window, patched with rags, followed by the sound of confused blows and oaths being exchanged. We hurried on. I had not known that such monstrousness, such abject horror, could exist in any Christian country. How had this fetid body grown in the largest city on earth, without anyone so much as noticing its existence? We were only a few moments from the glare of the Oxford Road, as I judged it, but these alleys were like some black shadow forever following its steps. We picked our way around the prone body of a woman, in the last stages of intoxication; her legs were covered with her own filth. If life could become so fearful a thing, then how could it be God’s handiwork? I fully believe that this entrance into the underworld of London took from me the last vestiges of Christian faith. Man was not a creature of God’s making. I thought that then, and I know it now.

WE CAME INTO AN OPEN THOROUGHFARE, gasping for cleaner air.

“Just a little further, gentlemen,” Westbrook said.

Bysshe was scarcely able to stand upright, and was bent double in the street. “Are you unwell?” I asked him.

“Not me,” he replied. “The world. The world is sick. I am the least part of it.” Then he retched in a corner.

We came into a narrow street, of which I did not see the name. There was a circular building of red brick, much like a tabernacle of the sects, and Westbrook went up to a little door set in the side of it. He knocked upon it loudly, and then pushed it open. The air within was filled with the welcome fragrance of spice, such as I imagine might have embalmed the body of a pharaoh. The room itself was circular in shape, like the building, and seemed to be entirely populated by girls and young women. They were sitting upon stools along the sides of two long tables, pouring powders into small earthenware jars. I watched them closely for a moment or two, as long as it took to view their whole operation. They cut out a piece of oil paper from a sheet beside them, placed it over the opening of the jar, and then secured a piece of blue paper over that; then they tied it with string around the neck of the jar. Their speed and dexterity were extraordinary; they seemed to be imitating some mechanism with their nimbleness and efficiency.

“Here is my sister,” Westbrook said. “Harriet.” He went over to one of the girls, and touched her shoulder. She smiled but she did not look up at him; she was too intent upon her labours. Her hair was pinned and held up in a linen cap, and it was clear that she had great beauty and delicacy of features. She could have been no more than fourteen or fifteen years old. Bysshe quoted some words of Dante, or so he informed me later, and I must say that I was also smitten with some secret wound. I noticed her strange pallor, no doubt from the inhalation of the spices, and saw that her fingers were bruised and torn from their continual operations. “She prepares spices for the households of the rich,” Westbrook said. “Twelve hours each day. Six days each week. She works for the sake of our family. Her shillings bring food to the table. Not spices.” He spoke with such bitterness that his sister glanced up at him for a moment, concerned, before she resumed her labours. “We will not detain you any longer, Harriet. Your overseer is coming to admonish us.”

An elderly female approached us, her hands held out. “Now Mr. Westbrook, you must not divert your sister from her work. She is all eyes for you and not her duties.” She seemed to be an amiable, comfortable woman not at all strict with her charges. “Go along now with your friends, and leave us poor females in peace.”

We left the building. “You are thirsty now, gentlemen? The spice gets to the throat. Poor Harriet is often afflicted with a cough.” We walked past a row of cottages, and he stopped to look around. “There is a respectable tavern on the other side of this street,” he said. He led us across the cobbles. “She is little better than a slave.”

“Who placed her there?” Bysshe asked him.

“My father. Here we are.”

We walked into the tavern, low and dark in the London fashion, and ordered three measures of stingo. Then we sat down at a table in the corner. “My father believes that the duty of mankind-and of womankind-is to work. He is a Particular Covenanter.”

“The worst of the Christian sects,” Bysshe said.

“He believes that the female is far inferior to the male. So he gave no thought to Harriet’s future welfare. He has decreed that she must work.”

“That is abominable.” Bysshe clutched his tankard, and began to tap it upon the table. His face had become quite red, quite fiery, and for the first time I noticed the trace of a white scar upon his forehead. “How could she be tamed and enslaved like some animal?”

“I pleaded with my father. I pointed out the benefits to Harriet of attendance at even a dame school. But he had hardened his heart.”

“Monstrous. Terrible. Can you not support her?”

“Me? I can hardly support myself.”

“Then I will free her!” Bysshe was glowing now with energy and ardour.

“What will you do?” I asked him.

“I will go to her father and offer him the same sum-the same sum as she earns-if he will allow her to enter some school or academy. I will not rest until it is done.”

“You must wait until she finishes her work,” Westbrook said.

“Every moment is an agony. Forgive me. I must go outside.” I accompanied him to the door of the tavern, and gave him a handkerchief with which he wiped the moisture from his face. “Thank you, Victor. I have become quite molten.”

“Where will you go?”

“Go? I am going nowhere.” Then, to my surprise, he began walking up and down on the cobbles outside the tavern.

When I returned to Westbrook I found that he had already ordered two more measures of stingo. “Bysshe is treading out his fury,” I told him. “He has a fervent soul.”

“Mr. Shelley is red hot. That is good. We need natures forged in fire.”

“I have noticed that here, in England, emotions run freely.”

“Ever since the Revolution in Paris. Mr. Shelley is right. There he goes. Do you see his cane swinging by the window? We, too, have been liberated. The events helped to create a new man.”

“A new kind of man?”

“You are laughing at me.”

“No. Believe me. I am not.”

“We cry more freely these days, do we not?”

“I have no standard of comparison. Ah, here is Bysshe.”

“I believe,” Bysshe said, laughing as he joined us, “that I was becoming an object of attention. There were comments.”

“You are an unusual sight in the neighbourhood.” Westbrook went over to the counter, and brought back Bysshe another tankard.

“Am I?” He seemed genuinely surprised, and it occurred to me that he was not aware of his own uniqueness. “One young man was eyeing my cane.”

“They are all poor, sir. But they mean you no harm. Most of them are honest enough.”