SQUID: Book the First - Chapter 5-6

"The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a night-cap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees—blood." Book 1, Chpt. 5, Pg. 27

This passage opens the exploration of the people of Paris and also portrays the peasants' hunger. Not only are they physically starved and willing to slurp wine from the streets, but they are also emotionally hungry from lack of freedom, justice and a new world order. They've been put through too much agony. This quote foreshadows the heights in which the peasants' distress will take them.