Old and New Paris Part 32

The Magistracy of the Prefect of Police was created under the Consulate of the 1st of July, 1800, when the Central Power took over the general police duties entrusted under the Monarchy to the Lieutenant-General of Police, and which had been transferred by the Revolution to the Commune of Paris. The Prefect is specially empowered to take, personally, every step necessary for the discovery and repression of crime and for the punishment of criminals. He is charged, moreover, under the authority of the Minister of the Interior, with all that relates to the administrative and economic government of the prisons and houses of detention and correction, not only in Paris, but throughout the department of the Seine, as well as in the communes of Saint-Cloud, Sevres, Meudon, and Enghien, suburbs of Paris belonging to the department of Seine-et-Oise.

The Prefect of Police has beneath his orders all the police of the capital, or rather of the department to which the capital belongs. This service is divided into two special organisations: Munic.i.p.al Police and Agents of Security. The "Security" force consists of three hundred agents with the t.i.tle of inspector, commanded by five chief inspectors, ten brigadiers, and twenty sub-brigadiers. These agents are employed in arresting malefactors, and are viewed with intense hatred by the criminal cla.s.s generally. The Munic.i.p.al Police counts an effective of about 8,000 men, commanded by 38 peace officers, 25 chief inspectors, 100 brigadiers, and 700 sub-brigadiers. The entire expenditure of the Prefecture of the Police Service amounts to twenty-five million francs a year, of which eleven millions are put down for pay and the remainder for uniforms, office expenses, and all kinds of extras.

"If," says a French writer who knows London as well as Paris, "our police is not always so clear-sighted and so clever as it might be, it is, at any rate, more tolerant than vexatious. Our 'keepers of the peace' do not impose on the Paris population all the respect that the English people feels for its policemen; nor have they the same rigid bearing or the same herculean aspect. But, on the other hand, they are without their brutality--quite incredible to anyone who has not lived in London. Nearly all have been in the army, and they preserve the familiar aspect of the French soldier; while of the rules laid down by the Prefecture, the one they least observe is that which forbids them to talk in the street with servant maids and cooks. But they are intelligent, ingenious, possessed of a certain tact, and brave to the point of self-sacrifice. They are at present more appreciated and more popular, with their tunic, their military cap, their high boots, and their little cloak, which give them the look of troops on a campaign, than were the Sergents de Ville whose swallow-tail coat and black c.o.c.ked hat were so much feared by rioters under the reign of Louis Philippe."

The Barracks of the Prefecture are occupied by the Garde Republicaine, which succeeds the Garde de Paris, the latter having itself succeeded the Garde Munic.i.p.ale, which was simply the Gendarmerie Royale of the Town of Paris, created under the Restoration. After the Revolution of 1848 the name of the Garde Munic.i.p.ale was changed, as after the Revolution of 1830 the t.i.tle of Gendarmerie Royale was abolished.

Notwithstanding alterations of name and certain slight modifications of uniform, the Republican Guard is a legion of gendarmerie like the different corps that preceded it. Commanded by a colonel, the Republican Guard is divided into two detachments or brigades, each under a lieutenant-colonel; the first consisting of three battalions of infantry, the second of three squadrons of cavalry. The whole force comprises 118 officers, with 2,800 men beneath their orders--2,200 infantry, and 600 cavalry.

The Republican Guard, one of the finest corps that can be seen, belongs to the cadres of the regular army; and it served brilliantly in the war of 1870 and 1871. Its special duties, however, are to keep order in the City of Paris; though, in consideration of its mixed character, the pay a.s.signed to it is furnished, half by the State, half by the Town of Paris. Among other merits it possesses an admirable band, in which may be found some of the finest orchestral players in a capital possessing an abundance of fine orchestras. The evidence of a Garde Republicaine, or gendarme, is accepted at the police courts as unimpeachable. The written statement drawn up by a gendarme may be denied by the accused, but it cannot be set aside.

"As a matter of fact," says M. Auguste Vitu, in his work on "Paris,"

"very few evil results are caused by this rule; for the gendarme is honest. But he may make a mistake. In London, the magistrate, having generally to deal only with policemen of his own district, knows them personally, can judge of their intelligence and disposition, and is able in certain cases to see whether they are obscuring or altering the truth. He exercises over them, in case of negligence or error, accidental or intentional, the right of reprimanding and of suspending them. In Paris the 'judges of correction,' before whom, at one time or another, every one of the 'keepers of the peace' or of the Republican Guards (altogether about 10,000 men) may appear, can only accept their evidence. It is doubtless sincere, but there is no way of testing it."

Of the spy system in connection with police administration it is difficult to speak with accurate knowledge, for the simple reason that it is not until long afterwards that secret arrangements of this kind are divulged. But in principle the system described by Mercier more than a hundred years ago still exists.

"This," writes that faithful chronicler, "may be termed the second part of Parisian grievances. Yet, like even the most poisonous reptile, these bloodhounds are of some service to the community: they form a ma.s.s of corruption which the police distil, as it were, with equal art and judgment, and, by mixing it with a few salutary ingredients, soften its baneful nature, and turn it to public advantage. The dregs that remain at the bottom of the still are the spies of whom I have just spoken; for these also belong to the police. The distilled matter itself consists of the thief-catchers, etc. They, like other spies, have persons to watch over them; each is foremost to impeach the other, and a base lucre is the bone of contention amongst those wretches, who are, of all evils, the most necessary. Such are the admirable regulations of the Paris police that a man, if suspected, is so closely watched that the most minute transaction in which he is concerned is treasured up till it is fit time to arrest him. The police does not confine its care to the capital only. Droves of its runners are sent to the princ.i.p.al towns and cities in this kingdom, where, by mixing with those whose character is suspicious, they insinuate themselves into their confidence, and by pretending to join in their mischievous schemes, get sufficient information to prevent their being carried into execution. The mere narrative of the following fact, which happened when M. de Sartine was at the head of this department, will give the reader an idea of the watchfulness of the police. A gentleman travelling from Bordeaux to Paris with only one servant in his company was stopped at the turnpike by the Custom House officer, who, having inquired his name, told him he must go directly to M. de Sartine. The traveller was both astonished and frightened at this peremptory command, which, however, it would have been imprudent to disobey. He went, and his fears soon subsided at the civil reception he met with; but his surprise was greatly increased when the magistrate, whom, to his knowledge, he had never seen before, calling him by his name, gave him an account of every transaction that had taken place previous to the gentleman's departure from Bordeaux, and even minutely described the full contents of his portmanteau. 'Now, sir,' continued the Lieutenant de Police, 'to show that I am well informed I have a trifle more to disclose to you. You are going to such and such an hotel, and a scheme is laid by your servant to murder you by ten o'clock.' 'Then, my lord, I must s.h.i.+ft my quarters to defeat his wicked intention.' 'By no means, sir; you must not even take notice of what I have said. Retire to bed at your usual hour, and leave the rest to me.' The gentleman followed the advice of the magistrate and went to the hotel. About an hour after he had lain down, when, no doubt, he was but little inclined to compose himself to rest, the servant, armed with a clasp-knife, entered the room on tip-toe, drew near the bed, and was about to fulfil his murderous intention. Then four men, rus.h.i.+ng from behind the hangings, seized the wretch, who confessed all, and soon afterwards paid to the injured laws of humanity the forfeit of his life."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A POMPIER.]

Since the Revolution the number of spies employed in France has doubtless diminished. But they have existed in that country, as in others, from time immemorial. A French writer, dealing with this subject, traces the history of espionage to the remotest antiquity; the first spies being, according to his view, the brothers of Joseph, who were for that reason detained when they visited him in Egypt as Pharaoh's minister. The Romans employed spies in their armies, and both Nero and Caligula had an immense number of secret agents. Alfred the Great was a spy of the chivalrous, self-sacrificing kind; for, risking his life on behalf of his own people he would a.s.suredly, had he been recognised in the Danish camp, have been put to death. The spy system was first established in France on a large, widely organised scale by Richelieu, under whose orders the notorious Father Joseph became the director of a network of spies which included not only all the religious orders of France, but many persons belonging to the n.o.bility and middle cla.s.ses. This sort of conspiracy had, moreover, its correspondents abroad.

The Police, strongly organised under Louis XIV., included a numerous body of spies. But all that had before been known in the way of espionage was eclipsed in Louis XV.'s reign, when the too famous De Sartine, Lieutenant of Police, gave to his spy system a prodigious extension. Under the administration of De Sartine spies were employed to follow the Court; and the Minister of Foreign Affairs maintained a subdivision of spies to watch the doings of all foreigners arriving in Paris, and to ascertain, in particular, the object of their visit. This course of action is followed to the present day in Russia, not only secretly, but in the first instance openly. Thus the chief of a bureau connected with the Foreign Office questions the stranger in the politest manner as to his motive in coming to Russia, the friends, if any, that he has there, his occupation, and his pecuniary resources.

A report is attributed to the above-named Lieutenant of Police in which it is set forth that to watch thoroughly a family of twenty persons forty spies would be necessary. This, however, was an ideal calculation, for, in reality, the cost of the spy system under Louis XV., as set down in the official registers of the police, did not amount annually to more than 20,000 francs. The Government had, however, at its disposal much larger sums received for licences from the gambling houses, and as fines and ransoms from evil-doers of all kinds. Berryer, the successor of De Sartine--bearer of a name which, in the nineteenth century, was to be rendered honourable--conceived the idea, inspired, perhaps, by a familiar proverb, of employing as spies criminals of various kinds, princ.i.p.ally thieves who had escaped from prison or from the pursuit of the police. These wretches, banded together in a secret army of observation, were only too zealous in the performance of the work a.s.signed to them; for, on the slightest negligence or prevarication, they were sent back to the hulks or to gaol, where a hot reception awaited them from their former comrades in crime. Hackney-coachmen, innkeepers, and lodging-house keepers were also engaged as spies, not to speak of domestic servants, who, through secret agencies, were sometimes supplied to householders by the police themselves. Many a person was sent to the Bastille in virtue of a _lettre de cachet_ issued on the representation of some valet before whom his master had uttered an imprudent word.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GUARDIAN OF THE PEACE.]

Mercier's picture of the spy system in Paris a few years before the Revolution is, to judge from other contemporary accounts, in no way exaggerated. The Revolution did not think even of suppressing espionage, but it endeavoured to moralise this essentially immoral, if sometimes necessary, inst.i.tution. In a report on this subject dated November 30, 1789, only a few months after the taking of the Bastille, the following significant pa.s.sage occurs:--"We have been deprived of a sufficient number of observers, a sort of army operating under the orders of the old police, which made considerable use of it. If all the districts were well organised, if their committees were wisely chosen and not too numerous, we should apparently have no reason to regret the suppression of that odious inst.i.tution which our oppressors employed so long against us." The writer of the report was, in fact, recommending, without being apparently aware of it, a system of open denunciation necessitating previously that secret espionage which he found so hateful; for before denouncing it would be necessary to observe and watch. Nevertheless, the Police of the Revolution employed no regular spies, registered, organised, and paid, until 1793; though this did not prevent wholesale denunciation on the part of officious volunteers. Robespierre, however, maintained a spy system more or less on the ancient pattern; and when the Empire was established, Napoleon's famous Prefect of Police, Fouche, made of espionage a perfect science. Fouche had at his service spies of all cla.s.ses and kinds; and the ingenious Mme. de Bawr has, in one of her best tales, imagined the case of a poor cure, who, after the suppression of churches and religious services, calls upon Fouche, an old schoolfellow of his, to ask for some employment; when the crafty police minister a.s.signs a certain salary to his simple-minded friend and tells him not to do any serious work for the present, but to go about Paris amusing himself in various cafes and places of entertainment, after which he can look in from time to time and say what has chiefly struck him in the persons he has seen and the conversations he has heard. At last the innocent cure finds that he has been doing the work of a spy. Fortunately, when he discovers to what a base purpose he has been turned, Napoleon has just restored public wors.h.i.+p; whereupon, by way of amends, Fouche uses his influence with the Emperor to get the poor man re-appointed to his old parish.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ORDERLY OF THE GARDE DE PARIS.]

Under the Restoration the spy system was maintained as under the Empire, but with additional intricacies. Fouche had been replaced by Vidocq, who, among other strange devices for getting at the thoughts of the public, obtained from the Government permission to establish a public bowling alley, which collected crowds of people, whose conversations were listened to and reported by agents employed for the purpose. The bowling alley brought in some 4,000 to 5,000 francs a year, which was spent on additional spies. The Prefect Delavau, with Vidocq as his lieutenant, went back to the system of Berryer under the ancient _regime_, taking into the State service escaped criminals, who for the slightest fault were sent back to gaol. An attempt was made by the same Delavau, in humble imitation of Berryer, to get into his service all the domestics of Paris; and in this way he renewed an old regulation by which each servant was to keep a book and bring it to the Prefecture of Police on entering or leaving a situation. To their credit, be it recorded, most of the servants abstained from obeying this discreditable order. Finding that his plan for watching private families through their servants did not answer, Delavau multiplied the number of agents charged with attending places of public entertainment.

"The Police," writes M. Peuchet in his "Memoires tires des Archives de la Police," "will never learn to respect an order so long as its superintendents are taken from the hulks and feel that they have their revenge to take on the society which has punished them." The justice of this remark has since been recognised. The first care of Delavau's successor, the honourable and much regretted M. de Belleyme, was to dismiss, and even to send back to their prisons, the army of cut-throat spies employed by the Prefect he replaced. At present, though his occupation stands no higher in public opinion than of old, the spy is not the outcast that he formerly was. Without being an honest man in the full sense of the word, he is not literally and legally a criminal. It is even a.s.serted that the French spy of our own time is a man of some character; by which is probably meant that he has never been convicted of any offence, that he does not drink, that he has no depraved tastes, and that in a general way he can be depended upon. "Espionage," says Montesquieu, "is never tolerable. Otherwise the trade would be exercised by honourable men. From the necessary infamy of the person must be inferred the infamy of the thing." This, in effect, is just what the Minister d'Argenson said when he was reproached with engaging none but rogues and knaves as spies. "Find me," he replied, "decent men to do such work!" The decent men have now, it appears, been found. So much the better.

As, however, there is said to be honour among thieves, so there is sometimes honesty among spies. Witness the case of the Abbe Lenglet-Dufresnoy, simultaneously employed by Louis XIV. to keep watch over Prince Eugene, and by Prince Eugene to report all that was done by Louis XIV., and who is said to have given the most exact information to both his employers.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XXV.

THE PARIS HOSPITALS.

The Place du Parvis--The Parvis of Notre Dame--The Hotel-Dieu--Mercier's Criticisms.

In the matter of police administration and of civic government generally; the Hotel de Ville is to the whole of Paris what the Mansion House and the Guildhall are to that part of London known specially as the City. The Hotel de Ville has charge, moreover, of all the Paris hospitals and benevolent inst.i.tutions. The general administration of the hospitals is entrusted to a Director, under the surveillance of a Consultative Committee.

The most ancient and most celebrated of all the Paris hospitals is the Hotel-Dieu, occupying a s.p.a.ce which is bounded on the north by the Quai aux Fleurs, on the south by the Place du Parvis, on the west by the Rue de la Cite, and on the east by the Rue d'Arcole.

The Place du Parvis deserves a word of mention to itself. The word "Parvis" has several derivations, the most popular of which is from the Latin _paradisus_. The ancient form of the French word was _paras_ or _paravis_, contracted into _parvis_; and it was applied to the open s.p.a.ce in front of a church because, in the days of the "mysteries,"

it was here that the paradise of the play was located. According to another derivation, the "parvis" is the ground outside a church which "_pare_" or "guards" the princ.i.p.al door--_huis_ in the ancient French.

In this sense the word is used to denote, in the Jewish Temple, the s.p.a.ce around the tabernacle. _Parvis celeste_ is a phrase employed by French poets to signify heaven or the firmament; which does not at all prove--indeed seems to disprove--that _parvis_ means, or ever did mean, the same thing as _paradisus_. The _parvis_ of the old churches was, in any case, used as a place of penance for those who had scandalised the town by some offence against good morals; and it was there that on certain occasions holy relics were brought for exhibition to the people.

The temples of Greece and Rome were surrounded by enclosures, as if to separate them from the public thoroughfare; and the first Christian churches had enclosures in front of the princ.i.p.al entrance, where tombs, crosses, statues, and sometimes fountains were to be seen. After the twelfth century the _parvis_ ceased to be enclosed; though so late as the sixteenth century the Parvis of Notre Dame appears, by exception, to have been shut in by a wall not more than three feet high, through which there were three different gateways.

The Parvis of Notre Dame served in ancient days the most varied purposes. Here, before the establishment of the University of Paris, public schools were held. It was a place of punishment, moreover; and it was on a scaffold erected in the Parvis of Notre Dame that Jacques de Molay and the Templars heard the sentence read which was afterwards executed upon them (March 18, 1314) in the ile aux Vaches, as the little island was anciently called where now stands the statue of Henri IV.

Here, too, under Francis I., Huguenots were given to the flames.

Jacques de Molay, the last grand master of the Templars, was born in Burgundy, and entered the order in 1265. He distinguished himself in Palestine, in the wars against the Mussulmans. Elected grand master in 1298, he was preparing to avenge the defeats which the Christian arms had recently sustained, when in 1305 he was recalled to France by Pope Clement V. The pretext for this summons was a projected union of the order of Templars with that of the Hospitallers. But the true object of Philip the Fair, for whom the Pope had acted only as instrument, was the destruction of the order, whose immense wealth had excited the monarch's covetousness. On the 13th of October, 1307, all the Templars were arrested at the same hour throughout France; and a process was inst.i.tuted against them in which every form of justice was violated.

Thirty-six knights expired under torture, and several owned to the crimes and the shameful immorality of which they were falsely accused.

Molay himself, in the agony of torture, allowed some words to escape him; but before dying nearly all the victims retracted the utterances wrung from them by pain. The Pope, throughout this tragic affair, followed the directions of the French king, to whom he owed his tiara.

To go back from history to legend, it was in the open s.p.a.ce afterwards to become the Parvis of Notre Dame that in 464 Artus, King of Great Britain, son of Uther, surnamed Pendragon pitched his camp when invading Gaul and ravaging the country. Gaul was at that time governed for the Emperor Leo by the Tribune Flollo, who retired to Paris and there fortified himself. Artus now defied Flollo to single combat. The Tribune accepted, and the duel took place on the eastern point of the ile de la Cite, with lance and hatchet. Blinded by the blood which flowed from a wound he had received in the head, Artus invoked the Virgin Mary, who, it is said, appeared to him in presence of everyone, and covered him with her cloak, which was "lined with ermine." Dazzled at this miracle, Flollo lost his sight, and Artus had now no trouble in despatching him. In memory of the Virgin's interposition, Artus adopted ermine for his coat-of-arms; which for a long time afterwards was retained by the kings and princes of Britain. He wished at the same time to consecrate the memory of his triumph, and accordingly erected on the very ground where the combat had taken place a chapel in honour of the Virgin, which at last became the cathedral church of Paris. Then Artus (or Arthur) returned to his British island, and there founded the Order of the Knights of that Round Table which is still preserved in Winchester Cathedral.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GENDARME.]

Until the Revolution the Parvis of Notre Dame was shut in north and south by populous districts through which ran narrow, ill-built streets, and which contained several buildings of importance. Since then a clean sweep has been made of all the tumble-down buildings in the ancient Cite, between the two banks of the Seine north and south, between the Cathedral on the east and the barracks of the Republican Guard on the west. The southern part of the Parvis has been transformed into a sort of English garden, in the centre of which stands an equestrian statue of Charlemagne by the sculptor Rochet.

In old French, the second of two substantives joined together did duty as genitive; so that Hotel-Dieu signified the hotel (or house) of G.o.d, just as in some ancient French towns _Mere-Dieu_, as the sign of an hotel, meant not, as is sometimes ignorantly supposed, "G.o.d the Mother,"

but "The Mother of G.o.d." The Hotel-Dieu or Hotel de Dieu (a house, that is to say, in which the poor and suffering were received and attended in the name of G.o.d and under His auspices) was founded about 660, in the time of Clovis II., son of Dagobert, by Saint Landri, twenty-eighth bishop of Paris. Here he was accustomed to receive, at his own expense, not only sick people, but also beggars and pilgrims. _Medicus et Hospes_, such was the motto of the bishop, who might justly claim the double t.i.tle of physician and host. In the course of centuries the good work begun by Saint Landri was continued on a large scale by the French kings, with Philip Augustus, Saint Louis, and Henri IV. prominent among them. Among the benefactors of the Hotel-Dieu must also be mentioned the Chancellor du Prat, and the first President, Pomponne de Bellievre.

The old Hotel-Dieu, after undergoing all kinds of repairs, was at last condemned as too small and too ill-ventilated. In 1868 a new hospital was begun just opposite the old one; and the building as it now stands, large, airy, and in every respect commodious, was finished in 1878. With abundance of s.p.a.ce at their command, the architects of the modern Hotel-Dieu made it their sole aim to secure for the patients every possible advantage, and their first care was to provide s.p.a.cious wards replete with light and air. One result has been that in a larger edifice the number of the beds has, in accordance with the best hygienic principles, been greatly diminished.

In the time of Saint Louis the old Hotel-Dieu received 900 patients.

This number was increased under Henri IV. to 1,300, and under Louis XIV.

to 1,900. At times, however, the sick or wounded persons admitted were far more numerous; and in 1709 the number of patients in the Hotel-Dieu is said to have reached 9,000. Not, however, the number of beds; for in the same bed several patients, at the risk of infection, contagion, and frightful mortality, were placed together. The new Hotel-Dieu, on the other hand, contains only 514 beds: 329 medical beds, 169 surgical beds, and sixteen cradles. The building having cost fifty million francs, it follows that each particular bed has cost nearly one hundred thousand francs; and philanthropists point out that at 6,000 francs per bed, "the ordinary figure in England and other countries," more than 8,000 patients might have been provided for in lieu of 500. It must be remembered, on the other hand, that the Hotel-Dieu contains, besides its hospital service properly so called, an administrative department: including amphitheatres of practical surgery, laboratories of pharmacy, chemistry, etc., which alone cost fourteen millions of francs.

According, moreover, to the original plan as approved by the princ.i.p.al professors and physicians of the Hotel-Dieu, there was to have been an additional storey containing 260 beds, to which the patients below were to have been transferred on certain days for change of air and to allow the lower rooms to be thoroughly ventilated and cleaned. This additional storey cost four millions of francs, and it had already been completed, when, for reasons unexplained, but which, according to M. Vitu, were political, it was pulled down.

The general plan of the Hotel-Dieu as it now stands comprises two ma.s.ses of parallel buildings: one beside the Parvis of Notre Dame, the other alongside the Quai Napoleon; the two facades, anterior and posterior, of the edifice being connected laterally by galleries at right angles to the Seine. The administrative department of the Hotel-Dieu is in that part of the building which faces the Parvis. On the ground floor, to the left, is the Central Bureau of Hospitals; the head-quarters of the hospital service, not only of Paris, but generally of the Department of the Seine. The staff consists of twenty physicians, fifteen surgeons, and three accoucheurs chosen by compet.i.tion; and from this body are selected the physicians and surgeons of the various Paris hospitals.

Formerly patients were admitted on mere application; but at present they are carefully examined by the physicians of the Central Bureau, who give out tickets of admission and a.s.sign beds so long as there is room. If the Hotel-Dieu is full the applicants for medical care are sent to other hospitals. Adjoining the Central Bureau are the rooms where out-door patients receive gratuitous advice.

The wards occupied by the patients are lighted by two rows of windows, north and south, and they look out upon the interior courtyards, which are planted with trees. This arrangement allows air to enter the well-kept apartments, and the rays of the sun to light up the curtains and white beds of a model hospital, where everything possible has been done to relieve the suffering and depression of its unhappy inmates. In the ophthalmic wards curtains of a particular kind are so arranged as only to admit the degree of light which the patients can bear.

Visitors to the Hotel-Dieu, as to other hospitals in Paris, cannot fail to observe that the air is less pure in the men's than in the women's wards. This is to be explained by the men being allowed the only solace possible under the circ.u.mstances, that of tobacco. Nor are their grey dressing-gowns by any means so becoming as the white frocks and white caps worn by the female patients.

Many of the wards contain only from two to eight beds. There is a sitting-room, moreover, with lounges, chairs, and sofas for the convalescent, not to speak of an open gallery above the portico, where patients who are well enough may, in fine weather, stretch their limbs.

The upper storey of that part of the building which faces the Quai aux Fleurs used to be occupied by the community of Dames Augustines, who from time immemorial had had no other abode and no other head-quarters.

But after the civil government had withdrawn from the Dames Augustines the hospital service of _La Pitie_ and _La Charite_, they all a.s.sembled at the Hotel-Dieu, where additional sleeping rooms were prepared for them beneath the roof. Subscriptions were solicited for them in a pastoral letter from the Archbishop of Paris, dated December 2, 1888; and a new retreat was then found for them in the Hospital of Notre Dame de Bon Secours. One duty imposed upon them, in the days when the Hotel-Dieu was composed of two large buildings on the banks of the Seine, was to wash, one day every month, whatever might be the temperature, 500 sheets. The sisters, equally with novices, were obliged to take part in these laundry operations. An ancient print, preserved in the National Library, gives a faithful representation of the was.h.i.+ng of the 500 sheets.

Admirable as has been the work accomplished in recent times by the Hotel-Dieu, the place seems to have been little better than a pest-house at the period when Mercier wielded his conscientious pen. "A man meets there," he wrote, "with a death a thousand times more dreadful than that which awaits the indigent under his humble roof, abandoned though he be to himself and nature alone. And we dare call that the House of G.o.d!--where the contempt shown to humanity adds to the suffering of those who go there for relief! The physician and servant are paid--granted; the drugs cost nothing to the patient--true again; but he will be put to bed between a dying man and a dead corpse; he will breathe an air corrupted by pestiferous exhalations; he will be subject to chirurgical despotism; neither his cries, his complaints, nor his expostulations will be attended to; he will have n.o.body by to soothe and comfort him; pity itself will be blind and barbarous, having lost that sympathising compa.s.sion, and those tears of sensibility, which const.i.tute its very being. In this abode of human misery every aspect is cruel and disgusting; and this is called the House of G.o.d! Who would not fly from the b.l.o.o.d.y, detested spot? Who will venture within a house where the bed of mercy is far more dreadful than the naked board on which lies the poorest wretch? This hospital, miscalled Hotel-Dieu, was founded by Saint Landri and Comte Archambaud in the year 660 for the reception of sick persons of either s.e.x. Jews, Turks, and infidels have an equal right to admission. There are 1,200 beds, and constantly between five and six thousand patients. What a disproportion! Yet the revenues of the hospital are immense. It was expected that the last fire which happened in this edifice would have been improved to the advantage of the patients, by the construction, on a healthier spot, of a new and more extensive structure. But no; everything remains on the same footing; though it is but too well proved that the Hotel-Dieu has every requisite to create and increase a mult.i.tude of disorders on account of the dampness and confinement of the atmosphere. Wounds soon turn to a mortification; whilst the scurvy makes the greatest havoc amongst those who, from the nature of their maladies, are forced to remain there for some time. Thus, the most simple distempers soon grow into complicated diseases, sometimes fatal, by the contagion of that ambient air. Both the experience and observation of the naturalist concur to prove that a hospital which contains above one hundred beds is of itself a plague.

It may be added that as often as two patients are laid up in the same room they will evidently hurt each other, and that such a practice is necessarily injurious to the laws of humanity. It is almost incredible, yet not the less true, that one-fifth of the patients are annually carried off. This is known and heard of with the most indifferent composure!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: PRINc.i.p.aL COURT OF THE HoTEL-DIEU.]

Nor does Mercier stop here. "Clamart," he continues, "is the gulf that swallows up the remains of those hapless men who have paid the last debt to nature in the Hotel-Dieu. It is an extensive burying-ground, or rather a voracious monster whose maw is ever craving for new food, though most plentifully supplied. The bodies are there interred without a coffin and only sewed up in the coa.r.s.est linen cloth. At the least appearance of death the body is hurried away, and there are many instances of people having recovered under the hasty hand that wrapped them up; whilst others have been heard to cry "mercy" when already piled up in the cart that carried them to an untimely grave. The cart is drawn by twelve men. A priest, covered with filth and mud, carrying a hand-bell and cross, are all the funeral pomp reserved for these unfortunate victims. But at that hour all is one! Every morning at four o'clock the dismal cart sets off from the Hotel-Dieu, and, as it rolls along, strikes terror into the neighbourhood, who are awoke by the awful sound of that bell. A man must be lost to all feeling who hears it unmoved. In certain seasons, when mortality was most rife, this cart has been seen to go backwards and forwards four times in four-and-twenty hours. It contains about fifty corpses, besides children, who are crammed between their legs. The bodies are cast into a deep pit, and are next covered with unslackened lime. This crucible, which is never shut up, seems to tell the affrighted looker-on that it could easily devour all the inhabitants that Paris contains. Such is the obedience paid to the laws, that the decree of the Parliament prohibiting all buryings within the walls of this city has at no time been carried into execution. The populace never fail on the day of All Souls to visit that cemetery, where they foresee that their bodies will one day be carried. They kneel and pray, and then adjourn to a tavern. To this spot, where the earth is fattened with the spoils of mankind, young surgeons resort by night, and, climbing the wall, carry off the dead corpses to make upon them their b.l.o.o.d.y experiments. Thus, the poor find no asylum even in death. And such is the tyranny over this unfortunate part of the community, that it does not cease till their very remains are hacked and hewed so as not to retain the least resemblance of man."