Part 15

The chapel of the establishment was originally constructed of planks from demolished river-boats; in 1669, Louis XIV replaced it by a church more in keeping with the importance of the institution. In 1684, there was constructed a special quarter for "the debauched women," which was called the _maison de force_; the unfortunates confined here were subjected to the most rigorous regulations, their labor was made "as severe as possible," but was ameliorated if they showed signs of repentance; their food was restricted to bread, soup, and water, they were clothed in linsey-woolsey gowns and wore sabots, and they slept upon straw, with a thin coverlet. For lighter faults they were punished by withdrawal of the soup, imprisonment in the cachot, and the wearing of the carcan, or wooden collar; for graver offences they were locked up, for longer or shorter periods, in a dark and filthy dungeon which was called the _Malaise_, and which was much like the _in pace_ of the Middle Ages. A regulation of this same year, 1684, applied the same system to the convicted prisoners and to the women imprisoned at the instance of their relatives or their husbands. The maison de force, placed in the centre of the Salpêtrière, became the prison de la Force. It included the _commun_, for the most dissolute and degraded women; the _correction_, in which were placed those who gave some hopes of reform; the prison, reserved for those detained by the king's orders, and the _grande Force_, for those condemned by the courts. The women and young girls destined to be sent to the colonies were kept in the Salpêtrière while waiting for their embarkation.

[Illustration: ANNUAL PROCESSION OF JUDGES, MAGISTRATES, ETC., ON THE OCCASION OF THE GRAND MASS, HELD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE JUDICIARY SEASON, IN THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE.

After a drawing by E. Loévy.]

In 1780 were erected the infirmaries of the prison; these were destined for the reception of young girls enceinte, furious insane female patients, and the incurables of all kinds. Previous to this, all the inmates who became ill were sent to the Hôtel-Dieu. Eight years later, Tenon wrote that he had seen eighty thousand persons in the Salpêtrière; and La Rochefoucauld's description of the condition of this prison-hospital and its inmates is almost equally incredible: "The most horrible enclosure that could be presented to the eyes of those who have preserved some respect for humanity is that in which nearly two hundred women, young and old, attacked by the itch, scald-head, and scrofula, sleep four or five in a bed promiscuously, communicating to each other all those diseases which contagion can propagate. How many times, in traversing all these haunts of misery, does not one say to himself with horror that it would be almost less cruel to allow the human race to perish than to preserve it with so little care and consideration!" There were then imprisoned here a considerable number of female insane who were considered incurable, and whose condition was even more frightful,--they were "chained in small wooden cells, low and narrow, veritable dungeons, damp and infectious, receiving light and air only by the door, and they were treated with the utmost brutality. That which rendered their dwellings more deadly, frequently fatal, was that, in winter, during the inundations of the Seine, these cells, situated on a level with the drains, became not only much more insalubrious, but, moreover, a place of refuge for very large rats, which during the night attacked the wretches confined there and bit them on every exposed portion of their bodies."

"At the morning visit, these lunatics would be found with their feet, their hands, and their faces torn by bites, which were very often dangerous, and of which several of them died."

In a report of one of the _administrateurs des hospices_, M. Desportes, this fact is attested; and one of the first cares of the conseil général of the hospices was to order a general renovation and reform, a thorough cleansing out. On the 1st Germinal, year X, the population of the Salpêtrière was reduced to four thousand individuals,--three thousand and forty in good health, six hundred insane, and three hundred sick. In 1815, the large building devoted to the epileptics was completely restored, and three years later the basement cells were all closed; in 1823, the hospital took the name of _Hospice de la Vieillesse-femmes_. In 1834, 1835, and 1836, further improvements and additions were made, and in 1845 the great reservoir of water was constructed, fed by the canal de l'Ourcq.

[Illustration: GARDES MUNICIPAUX: ARREST OF A DESERTER. After a drawing by I. Marchetti.]

By royal letters-patent accompanying the edict of April 27, 1656, the union, under the direction of the Hôpital-Général, of the Salpêtrière, the hospital Saint-Jacques, the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and other houses, revenues, and dependencies appertaining to the Confrérie de la Passion, was declared; but the Hôpital Saint-Jacques never came into this union. To the Bicêtre were sent all the poor, men, sick and well; the Pitié was devoted in part to boys and youths, and at the _maison de Scipion_ were established the butchers and the bakers for all the inmates of these various establishments. All mendicants, sick and well, came under the jurisdiction of the Hôpital-Général; all were required to labor according to their strength, and fifty-two skilled workmen were designated by their corporations or guilds to direct the workrooms established in the different branches of these institutions. "Prison labor" was not then the bugaboo it has since become to "organized labor." The directors had the right to administer justice among all the inmates of their institutions; the punishments most in vogue were the whipping-post, the carcan, the prison, and the lower dungeons. The missionary priests of Saint-Lazare had charge of the spiritual instruction of the mendicants, under the authority and jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Paris.

All this being regulated, it was announced in all the pulpits of the different parishes of Paris that the Hôpital-Général would be opened the 7th of May, 1657, for all the poor who wished to enter it of their own free will, while all mendicants were forbidden, by the voice of the public crier, to ask alms anywhere in the city. On the 13th, a mass of the Saint-Esprit was celebrated in the church of the Pitié, and the next day it was announced that five thousand of the poor had been admitted to the hospitals. It was then proposed to expel from Paris all those who had not come to constitute themselves inmates, or to imprison them by force; but this was found to be difficult. A patrol was sent through the city to gather up all these refractory ones, but the populace rose to recapture all those who had been arrested,--lackeys, bourgeois, artisans, soldiers, and especially soldiers of the guards, excited by the women of the town, gave themselves up to thieving and pillaging in the vicinity of the Salpêtrière and the Bicêtre and the other establishments of the Hôpital-Général.

The liberality of Mazarin, of the king, and of some of the wealthier citizens provided the administration of this great institution with its principal resources; the cardinal gave it at one time a hundred thousand livres, and left it sixty thousand francs in his will. It was exempted from numerous taxes and imposts, it was entitled to a third of all the confiscations awarded the king; to those fines imposed in the city, the faubourgs, and the jurisdiction of the _prévôt_ of Paris which were not otherwise applied, to the duty on wine entering the city, to five sous on each _minot_ [three bushels] of salt sold in the granaries of Paris, to a quarter of the fines from the departments of streams and forests, to a tax on the admissions to theatres, etc. Later, the Hôpital-Général was authorized to open the first _mont-de-piété_, or pawnbroking establishment, in France.

In addition to all their other functions, the Bicêtre and the Salpêtrière were created, by the regulation of April 20, 1684, _maisons de correction_ for children of good families, of both sexes. The bureau of the Hôpital-Général ordered the arrest of idle, disobedient, or dissipated children, at the request of fathers or mothers, tutors or guardians, or of the nearest relatives, and even, in case of the death of the parents, on the complaint of the curés of their parishes. "Although originally created principally as a philanthropic institution, the Hôpital-Général was assuming more and more a penitentiary character; the regulation of 1680 had already added to the list of its criminals 'vagabond individuals, whom idleness leads to an infinite number of irregularities,' and had directed its officers to imprison them in a special prison, either for a determinate period or for life; there, they were to be given only the amount of food actually necessary to sustain life, and were employed at the hardest labor that their strength would permit. It does not appear that this frightful severity produced any result, for, from year to year, new edicts were constantly appearing, redoubling these rigorous measures against the mendicants."

[Illustration: IN THE GALLERIES OF THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE: A CONFERENCE OF "AVOCATS."

After a drawing by E. Brun.]

As organized at present, the Bicêtre contains three thousand one hundred and fifty-three beds, and the Salpêtrière three thousand eight hundred and eleven. The latter includes also a clinic for nervous diseases, with consultations for out-door patients, the former clinic of Doctor Charcot, and one service of electro-therapeutics, for both in-door and out-door patients, which attracts many from outside. There is a very curious medical museum; and the institution itself claims to be one of the great centres of scientific research.

An interesting feature of the general administration of the Parisian hospitals is the arrangement made by the _internes_, the graduates in medicine and pharmacy in the in-door service of the institution, for providing themselves with the necessary meals. These young men are paid by the Assistance Publique the modest sums of from six hundred to a thousand francs a year, from the first to their fourth year, out of which they have to provide for themselves until they are _de permanence_. They therefore make provisions for dining in common, and their _salles de garde_ are cheerful and very informal gathering-places, gay and hospitable, liberally adorned with inscriptions, engravings, and paintings, permeated with the souvenirs and traditions of the institution to which they are attached. At the Hôtel-Dieu, owing to the size of the hospital and the number of clinics, the number of _internes_ and _externes_, _bénévoles_ and _provisoires_, and their friends, is so great that the social character of the salle de garde naturally suffers; each one dines hastily, occupies himself only with his invited guest, and, after coffee, if his duties do not claim him, goes off in search of some shady promenade, which the cloisters of the Hôtel-Dieu--unlike the green courts of the Bicêtre and Salpêtrière--do not offer him. Consequently, the gastronomical qualities of the repast assume a considerable importance, and the duties of the _économe_ become proportionally heavy.

[Illustration: DEPARTURE FROM THE "DÉPÔT" FOR THE HOUSE OF DETENTION--LA PETITE-ROQUETTE. After a drawing by E. Vavasseur.]

This very useful official is a comrade endowed with the necessary domestic and executive qualities, who assumes the onerous task of directing this refectory. He must be a gourmet, of course, this is indispensable; he must have imagination and experience in order to prepare and to suitably vary the _ménus_; he must be economical, orderly, judicial, and discriminating, so as to know which rebellions and protests are to be heeded and which ignored, and to preserve suitable relations with his _cantinière_. The interne on duty alone has a right to have his repasts served by the Assistance Publique; as these are constantly changed, the administration furnishes the equivalent of what it owes in provisions, which are turned into the common stock. It also furnishes the necessary utensils and cooking apparatus. The cantinière must have given proof of her worth either as a cook in the hospital or as a _cordon bleu_ in the city. She must also be provided with a husband or some other connection capable of serving at table. At the end of each repast, the économe marks on a list of his subscribers a cross opposite the name of each participant, or two or more crosses if he has had guests. At the end of the month, the permanent expenses are added up, wages, etc., which sum is divided into as many parts as there are internes. This is a fixed amount, the proportionate share of which must be paid whether the subscriber has dined only once, or not at all. Then the cost of the number of meals actually consumed is added up and divided by the number of crosses. This cost of each meal varies greatly in the different hospitals, those outside the city walls being able to provide more cheaply. Thus, in 1893, it was one franc seventy-five centimes at the Hôpital de la Charité, and only eighty-five centimes at the Bicêtre. The presence of the monthly fixed charges which have to be met brings about the apparent anomaly that the more meals the young doctor eats in his messroom the less proportionally do they cost him.

As a recompense for his labors in the general service, the économe has the privilege of presiding in the centre of the table, of carving, and of sitting as umpire on all the _manifestations_. When any one of the habitués of the common table has passed an examination, assisted his master in some difficult operation, or otherwise had a chance to distinguish himself, it is in order for him to celebrate the great occasion by discreet libations in which his friends may share. As it sometimes happens that these fortunate ones--entirely through timidity and modesty--omit to mention their professional successes at the hospitable board, the custom has arisen of proclaiming their virtues for them and thus causing them to "manifest" themselves. "But, as the examinations are rare, and the flasks of Chartreuse small, some one is called upon to manifest, on the slightest provocation, for the promulgation of an unseasonable political opinion, for a bad pun, for anything you please. The _manifesteur_ is made aware of the fate which menaces him by a clinking of bottles and plates, by a hammering with the backs of knives;--however, his condemnation is not definite until the économe has pronounced judgment upon it. He is careful to see that it is not always the same culprit who is executed."

[Illustration: PRESIDENT M. DELAGORGNE, OF THE COURT WHICH SENTENCED M. ZOLA TO IMPRISONMENT AND FINE ON ACCOUNT OF HIS DEFENCE OF DREYFUS.

After a drawing by L. Sabattier.]

As a contrast to the Hôtel-Dieu, the Hôpital Cochin, in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, has one of the smallest salles de garde in Paris. In recompense, its diners have under their feet an immense city, with streets, open places, and many inhabitants, a city cool in summer and warm in winter, and which, for a long period of time, the internes of this hospital had been in the habit of considering as an annex to their dining-room. It is not every one who would take this view of the catacombs; but the practice of medicine and surgery does not lend itself to the cultivation of squeamishness. Every evening, accordingly, exploring parties were organized to visit these subterranean streets; underneath the hospital itself is a large open square, from which radiate, in every direction, lanes and avenues. These the internes at first explored by means of a compass, but, as a result of some judicious meditation before the commemorative slab recording the death by starvation of Philibert Aspaut, concierge of the Val-de-Grâce, lost in the catacombs in 1793, they took the trouble to unearth an old plan in the Musée Carnavalet and draw up a new one, probably now one of the best in existence. In consequence of this prudent conduct, they have never had any losses to deplore; but the frequency of these unprofessional rambles finally aroused the administration to action, and the hospital entrance to the underground city was closed. Since then, the disconsolate diners have had to seek other distractions;--it is said that they are greatly given to equitation, but as they have no horses in their salle de garde, they paint them by squadrons on the walls, as illustrated on page 259.

The catacombs are those portions of the ancient stone-quarries under the city which have been used as municipal ossuaries since 1786. As far back as the Roman epoch, the inhabitants of Lutetia were in the habit of drawing their building material from these subterranean quarries, of clay, gypsum, and limestone. The clay, _argile plastique_, is found in the region of Passy and Grenelle; the zone of gypsum extends from Montmartre to Bercy, and the limestone, rich in fossils, is found under Passy and most of the city on the left bank of the river, from the Jardin des Plantes on the east to the former barrière de Vaugirard on the west. This stone was largely used in the construction of ancient and mediæval edifices,--the Palais des Thermes, the portal of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, a portion of Notre-Dame, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and the old Hôtel-Dieu, were all supplied from the quarries of the Faubourgs Saint-Jacques and Saint-Michel. As the capital increased, these excavations were carried farther; those nearer the centre of the city were gradually filled up after being exhausted of their building material. By 1774, they had become the refuge of numerous thieves and vagabonds, and in consequence of the many accidents caused by the sinking of the earth over them, in the quartiers Saint-Jacques, of the Observatoire, and of Montrouge, in 1774, 1777, and 1778, an official inspection was ordered by the government, and a corps of engineers was directed to carry out all the necessary measures. The credit of the idea of using the quarries of Montsouris and of Montrouge as a receptacle for the bones from the ancient cemetery of the Innocents is ascribed to M. Lenoir, lieutenant général de police, as early as 1780; but it was not till November, 1785, that M. Guillaumot, inspecteur général of the quarries, received definite orders to prepare a suitable place for these relics of mortality.

[Illustration: ANCIENT CEMETERY DES INNOCENTS, IN THE RUE AUX FERS, 1780, SHOWING THE CHARNIERS FULL OF SKULLS. After a design by Bernier.

The accumulation of human remains, during eight or nine centuries, in this place had become so great and evil that, in 1786, they were all transferred to the Catacombs, and a market was erected on this spot.]

This officer selected the quarries under the plain of Montsouris in the locality known as the Tombe-Issoire--it was said from a famous brigand of the time of Louis VII, who ravaged this neighborhood, because of their extent and their proximity to the city. It was proposed to deposit in this ossuary not only the bones from the Innocents, but from all the other cemeteries, charniers, and sepulchral chapels of Paris. On the 7th of April, 1786, the quarries were formally blessed by the clergy and consecrated to their new use, and on the same day the transportation of the bones from the Innocents was begun. It was carried on constantly, at the close of each day, in funerary cars covered with a pall and followed by surpliced priests, chanting the service for the dead. This operation, interrupted only during the heat of summer, was completed in less than fifteen months; and the catacombs--so called from this date--have since received a vast number of bones from other cemeteries and churches, and also of the victims of the many street revolutions of the capital. During the Revolution and the Terror, a number of bodies were also thrown in here, and down to 1810 no attempt was made to arrange the bones, which were piled up like rubbish. It is estimated that these subterranean crypts now contain the remains of nearly three millions of persons,--the guide-books say six.

In 1810, a new organization and rearrangement of the catacombs were carried out, the falling roofs were propped up, the galleries cleaned out, ventilated, and dried, and the bones all symmetrically arranged along the walls--the large bones of the arms and legs piled up like cord-wood, presenting their ends, and interrupted by occasional rows, or centre-pieces, or cornices of skulls, and the smaller bones thrown in behind them, between them and the wall, so as to be out of sight. Various attempts at grotesque or fanciful designs, wrought out with craniums and tibias, break the monotony of these grisly corridors. Between 1792 and 1814, the catacombs permitted the suppression of sixteen cemeteries, and they still receive the bones that are turned up in the course of various excavations in the city. Visitors were formerly admitted to explore them every day, but in consequence of the numerous accidents which happened, greater restrictions were imposed, and it is now permitted to make this visit only on the first and third Saturdays of each month, and when furnished with a permit obtained from the Préfet of the Seine. The entrance is on the Place Denfert-Rochereau, and the exit on Rue Dareau; the journey is made under the care of a guide, and the visitor--who is advised to wear sufficiently thick clothing and heavy shoes--is furnished with a candle and a holder for which he pays fifty centimes.

The total number of entrances is sixty-three, many of them outside the city; these galleries are sufficiently well ventilated by numerous openings, and dry. The visitors traverse a certain route, in a general southerly direction, inspecting the various curiosities on the road and the great _Ossuaire_. In the latter are included several of these,--the _Fontaine de la Samaritaine_, so called from an inscription which recalls the words of the Saviour to the Samaritan woman; the _Tombeau de Gilbert_, which is only a column supporting the roof to which was given the form of a sepulchral monument; the _Lampe sépulcrale_, the _Crypte de Saint-Laurent_, similar constructions, and the geological collection formed by M. Héricart de Thury, chief engineer of mines and inspector-general of quarries in 1810, which contains specimens of all the earths and minerals encountered in excavating the quarries.

[Illustration: UNDERGROUND WARD-ROOM OF THE MEDICAL STUDENTS OF THE HOSPICE COCHIN, IN THE CATACOMBS.

After a drawing by Henri Bellery-Desfontaines.]

There were formerly to be seen in the Samaritan fountain numerous red fish, which were placed there in 1813 and thrived, but have now disappeared. The quarries are not without animal life,--in the region of the Jardin des Plantes have been found various insects, species of coleoptera, myriapod and thysanoura, and several small crustacea, all more or less blind. One of these latter, a species of small crayfish, inhabits the waters of a little stream which traverses the Ossuaire. The bones of the combatants of 1789 and 1790, and those of the victims of September, 1792, are collected and arranged by themselves in this ossuary. The walls of the galleries are set off with numerous quotations drawn from sacred literature and engraved on pillars in French, Latin, Greek, Italian, and Swedish.