Part 16

When we reflect upon the melancholy catastrophe which has befallen the monuments of the most distinguished Frenchmen, it is to be considered a fortunate circumstance that the mausoleum of Turenne was rescued from the general devastation. As the Abbey of St. Denis is totally destroyed and there is no longer a place for the illustrious dead, except the Pantheon, in which their bodies would be commingled with those of the ruffians of the Republic, the Temple of Mars is undoubtedly the most honourable asylum for the body of one who, notwithstanding his faults, was perhaps the greatest General of France.

The Hospital of the Invalides maintains its pre-eminence over every other charitable institution of France.

The funds for the disbursement of its expenses are paid with great exactitude, and its internal organisation is conducted with exactitude and decorum.

Had other institutions of France, not less useful, been maintained with equal scrupulousness, my pen would not have found an opportunity of portraying the wickedness and folly of a people whose history during the last ten years is nothing but a disgusting record of rapine, murder and impiety.

XXXIII

HUMANE INSTITUTIONS--_continued_ SOUP ESTABLISHMENTS

During the last winter (1801–1802) the distress of the lower orders rose to such a height that it became necessary to open subscriptions for the distribution of soup to the poor. A committee was formed for the purpose, and this committee distributed 164,000 rations of soups, besides what was sold from different furnaces, established by voluntary contributions.

The committee commenced their useful labours with the names of only _one hundred subscribers_. The price of each subscription is eighteen francs or fifteen shillings and ninepence sterling, and any person is at liberty to take as many subscriptions as he thinks proper. In consideration of every subscription the subscriber receives 240 bonuses of soup from any establishment he may prefer, or he may leave the disposal of them to the committee.

[Sidenote: HUMANITY OF BONAPARTE]

Madame Bonaparte, the wife of the First Consul, who is a most benevolent, charitable and kind-hearted woman, gave 600 francs towards the establishment of a furnace in her division.

The committee solicited the generosity of the public functionaries, “Not because they are wealthy, but because as the greater part of them were known for their philanthropy, their example would encourage others to subscribe.” The result of this appeal to these rich philanthropists who fatten upon the blood of the people was somewhat ludicrous, considering the small subscriptions it drew forth. The Senate granted a subsidy of 1500 livres, or £60 sterling; the Council of State took forty-six subscriptions, about £35; the Bank of France, 60, about £40; the Mont de Piété, 20, about £14; and the officers of the Consular Guard, 84, making a total of about £252!

The First Consul generously put down his name for a 1000 subscription, which would have amounted to £787 sterling. But there was no security for his payment except his inclination; his servile vassals, however, boasted of his magnificence, and the Commissioners who drew up the report on the distribution of the soup broke forth into the following apostrophe:--“Our eyes are turned with complacency on the 1000 subscription of the First Consul. The Conqueror of Marengo has made _humanity_ the companion of _glory_. His triumphant hand has repaired the edifice of social happiness; this hero, who seemed to have attained the summit of _perfection_ and _grandeur_, has proved that a good action may make him _still mount_, and lift him above sublimity itself!”

Unluckily for the trumpeters of this “astonishing man” this hero who has made humanity the companion of glory has not to this hour paid one sou of the thousand subscription to which he signed his name and entered into a solemn engagement.

In the report made by Cadet de Vaux to the Minister of the Interior it is stated--“Of all the branches of polite economy the least advanced among us is public beneficence. Formerly there was an organised system of charity, but now unhappily this branch of our administration is defective. When there were clergy resident in every parish, their profession gave them the privilege of asking charity from the rich and of penetrating into the secret wants of the poor, and they therefore possessed much greater opportunities of doing good than does the present Board of Public Assistance, notwithstanding its activity and zeal. Among the religious orders some corporations were distinguished for their zeal in affording relief to the poor, particularly the Sisters of Charity, who devoted their whole lives to the most fatiguing details of charitable benevolence!”

These respectable Associations no longer exist, but it is under consideration to permit the re-assembling of the dispersed communities.

In France at this time there are neither parochial rates nor workhouses such as we have in England. For idle, disorderly or viciously disposed persons no midway exists between the high road and the prison, and no kind of provision exists which affords employment to persons who, from sickness, misfortune, or lack of employment, have been thrown out of work. Hence the poverty of a French pauper is the consummation of wretchedness; rags, filth and disease waste his constitution and destroy his body, while despair for ever settles on his soul. If he have strength enough to carry a musket he is instantly transported into a soldier; and if this means of subsistence fail, his only alternative is to steal or to become a beast of burden, performing labour that in other countries is only executed by horses and asses.

But miserable as he is, the lot of the female beggar is infinitely worse. Objects of loathsome corruption and horrible aspect, they seem planted in the streets of this capital, only to laugh to scorn the Revolution, and to rebuke the greedy and the sumptuous magnificence of the upstart. As you traverse the streets they follow you, conjuring you in the name of God, and, with entreaties which would melt a heart of flint, implore you to give them a little charity.

The charitable are deprived of the power of discriminating; they must attend to the cries of beggary or submit to be pursued for half a mile by the same forlorn wretch, imploring for mercy and pity. This is indeed a wretched state of society, yet we are told the Revolution was the work of philosophers, made for the benefit of the people to dispel the darkness of their prejudices, and to remove all the moral and physical evils under which they groaned before the advent of freedom.

XXXIV

HUMANE INSTITUTIONS--_continued_

LA SALPÊTRIÈRE. HÔTEL DIEU. HÔPITAL DE JESUS, DE LA CHARITÉ, DE LA PITIÉ. THE FOUNDLING SOCIETY

[Sidenote: HOSPITALS]

La Salpêtrière, before the Revolution, was a prison for females; since that event it has been converted into an ordinary prison, an infirmary, and at length a hospital. It is an immense building, extremely well situated near the river, and is now appropriated as a receptacle for girls, above 1500 of whom are maintained in it. I am sorry to say I can say little in favour of its comfort or cleanliness.

The Hôtel Dieu, changed into Hôtel de l’Humanité by the Revolutionists, is an infirmary for the sick and diseased. It will contain 4000 people.

The Hospital of Jesus is not upon so large a scale. The Hospital of Charity is appropriated exclusively for males. The Hôpital de la Pitié is somewhat similar to our parish charity schools, for the maintenance and instruction of poor boys; this hospital is under very good discipline. The Hospital of the Trinity of St. Sulpice and of the Incurable are well regulated, particularly the latter, where the utmost attention and humanity are shown to its miserable inhabitants.

The Foundling Hospital, now called that of La Maternité, overflowed with little helpless infants during those periods of the Revolution when the holy rites of marriage were treated with derision, and licensed vice was the order of the day. Consequently the number of foundlings ever since the accession of the Corsican hero still exceeds that of all Europe.

This establishment embraces two objects, provision for lying-in women and maintenance for foundlings.

I can dwell with complacency and pleasure upon the advantages of this hospital, and I am glad to be able to praise its excellent management.

It is divided into two compartments, one for the reception of pregnant women, who are received into this house during the eighth month, upon their presenting themselves for admission, and are allowed to remain until a proper time has elapsed after their delivery. The second compartment is allotted to those children who have been exposed or abandoned by their parents. Nothing can be more interesting than the spectacle of so many infants in cradles, arranged in lines. They are put into the hands of wet nurses belonging to the institution, until women out of the country can be found to take charge of them in their own homes. Each wet nurse in the institution has care of two infants, her own and a foundling.

This establishment has supplied the place of that which was in pre-Revolution days called l’Hospice des Enfants Trouvés; a charity which owes its origin to the efforts of S. François de Paul.

It is a happy idea to blend the principles of the former institution with a provision for poor lying-in women, who formerly in their hour of labour had to resort to the Hôtel Dieu and be delivered amongst the sick.

The building for these women is part of the house once occupied by the Society of the Oratorians.

[Sidenote: OLD FOUNDLING HOSPITAL]

It is spacious and airy and has very large galleries, leading to the respective apartments, in each of which not more than six or seven beds are prepared.

The children are accommodated in the _ci-devant_ Abbey of Port Royal--a convent formerly occupied by nuns. During the days of proscription and massacre, this edifice was converted into a prison. The passages were blocked up, daylight shut out, and circular walls raised. The revolutionary demoniacs changed the name of Port Royal into that of Port Libre.

Whilst it was used as a Foundling Hospital, 500 infants, 200 wet nurses, belonging to the house, 200 women either expecting a child or having already laid in, and forty sick persons were indiscriminately crowded together, besides a multitude of attendants and the apothecary. The multitude of partitions impeded the circulation of the air and retained the offensive effluvia which proceeded from this multitude of children, always clothed in dirty linen. There was not one apartment of the building through which a pure draught of air passed.

It was difficult to inspect so many dark rooms detached from each other, it frequently happened that two women who had just become mothers slept in the same bed. A general cleansing and whitewashing of the place was unknown. The institution was burdened with children left upon the hands of the charity, for the country nurses having been paid with assignats or paper money and thus deprived of the full value of their wages, nurses would not now offer themselves. The great influx of children required a proportionate number of house nurses, and hence arose the impossibility of selecting them, the necessity of complying with all their demands and a great want of management.

The food and the linen, in consequence of the low ebb to which the credit of the house was sunk, were left to be provided by contractors. The nurses had no clothes found them, pregnant women could get none, and the infants were not even provided with linen which is an absolute necessity. These evils resulted from the prodigal waste of public money which during the Directorship was diverted from its proper objects to gorge the insatiate appetite and hungry rapacity of the officials of the Government. Indeed, I am in possession of unanswerable vouchers to prove that to this circumstance (_i.e._, public and private plunder) the present shameful and dilapidated condition of the hospitals is to be attributed. So forcible are the representations of the Consular precepts on this subject that many go so far as to boldly assert that the grants made for the support of the hospitals have been scandalously diverted from their original destination and lavished without account on less necessary purposes.

However, in 1801 the Council General of the Institution were enabled to create and carry out a most necessary series of reforms.

The first duty they had to discharge was to secure and regulate the payment of the country nurses.

Only £250 was due to these women, yet even this was paid with difficulty. This debt has now been discharged, and this has been attended with a very striking effect. The infants have been sent to nurse much sooner, and the amount of deaths has in consequence greatly diminished; so many house nurses have not been required, so those who are employed are now selected with care and kept under a regular management; persons who were of no use whatever to the Institution have been discharged. Attention has been directed to salubrity, economy and supply of clothing and linen. The small outbuildings, which were in a ruinous state, have been pulled down; the partitions which divided the wards taken away; the number of windows increased, and cleanliness introduced over the whole hospital.

Walls have been close scraped and afterwards whitewashed; rotten timbers have been repaired, and the unserviceable and antiquated window frames renewed and replaced.

[Sidenote: “MATERNITÉ” CHARITY]

The inspectors observed that a quantity of the provisions disappeared, and the people of the house were constantly complaining they had not enough. The truth being that they sold the victuals supplied to them.

To remedy this evil refectories have been established, where they all eat together. In the lying-in part of the hospital the food is now abundant, wholesome and varied. The children’s kitchen, in which milk, panade and broth are prepared, is under especial inspection. The place of apothecary has been suppressed. Plenty of linen is provided for the children. The servant girls and house nurses as well as the women patients are now well supplied with clothes.

All double bedsteads have been removed.

Each woman and each nurse has a separate bed, and the latter two cribs, one for each of the infants they suckle. The bedsteads and cribs have been repainted, and the vermin which used to infect them has disappeared.

Two next excellent regulations have been adopted which deserve notice. The women near their time were formerly suffered to be without employment, in consequence of which they fell into a languor and lowness of spirits, frequently not disassociated from bodily indisposition. Work-rooms have now been established where they are employed in sewing and embroidery under the direction of a proper person belonging to the house. The charity might convert their earnings to the benefit of the hospital, but instead it pays them for items, the intention being to encourage them to moderate work, so that when they quit the hospital they may not be distressed by the painful uncertainty of not knowing where to search for the subsistence of the morrow.

The second regulation establishes a course of midwifery for female pupils, from all the departments. There were generally four pupils under the chief midwife, whom she instructs in the practice of midwifery for three months. This has just given rise to a public school of midwifery in the Hospital of Maternity, to which are invited as many midwives as can be procured from the several Departments. The theoretical part is to be taught by M. Bandelocque, principal accoucheur, and the practical by Madame la Chapelle, principal midwife. The school will open three months hence, on August 23. France has long stood in need of such an establishment on which the lives of so many individuals depend.

All these improvements, which have so entirely changed this vitally important establishment, are to be attributed to the energy and determination of one man, whose name deserves to be remembered and revered by future generations of Frenchmen. This individual is Monsieur Camus, member of the General Council of Hospitals.

Citizen Bailly, the steward and housekeeper, has also greatly contributed towards the establishment of order and the direction and accomplishment of the several kinds of work.

I hope I have not been too prolix in these details, but it is impossible and unjust to applaud or to censure institutions without entering into very minute particulars respecting them; besides which, as the above statements have been _privately_ but _officially_ communicated to me, I cannot help thinking they have some public interest. With a very few exceptions the account of one hospital in Paris contains the history of every other.

By an exposure of the disgraceful decay into which one of the most important charitable establishments of old France was allowed to fall, when it came under the administration of the friends of the people, some conception can be formed as to the amount of interest the French Government during the last ten years has bestowed upon such subjects.

At this moment the very existence of all charitable institutions in France (I do not except the hospitals) depends entirely on the personal industry of the few good and virtuous men and women who adorn the commonwealth.

[Sidenote: SISTERS OF CHARITY REQUIRED]

All the hospitals and other institutions for the protection of the poor of Paris are maintained by the Government, the private endowments having all been confiscated during the Revolution. It is, therefore, just and proper that the conduct of that Government should be fully investigated, when complaints resound from every quarter, against its inattention to the fundamental principles of the establishment.

I conclude these remarks by presenting the observations and requisitions of the present Prefect of the Department of the Seine:

“Re-establish the former Sisters of Charity, place them at the head of the hospital department, authorise them to choose others, that this useful institution may be perpetuated. Employ in sedentary labours the old men and the infirm; the produce of their work may be divided between themselves and the hospital. Provide for the necessities of the hospitals by _securing on them national property equal in value to the amount of what they formerly possessed_.

“This _restitution_ will supply the place of assessments, whose produce is insufficient, in the meantime let the produce of these assessments be paid into the treasuries of the hospitals _in order that they may never be diverted from their primitive destination_. Establish houses of instruction for the reception of foundlings, when they have passed their infancy, and habituate them to industry.

“Repair the buildings. Provide linen. Discharge the debts of the hospitals, and confide to a single administration the direction of the succour to be afforded to the whole department, and let it be distributed in proportion to the population of the Commune.”

XXXV

HUMANE INSTITUTIONS--_continued_ NATIONAL INSTITUTION FOR THE DEAF AND DUMB UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE ABBÉ SICARD. THE SAUVAGE D’AVEYRON

The Abbé Sicard[1] is a man who, as a classical, humane and scientific instructor of the deaf and dumb, inspires the liveliest emotions of admiration and respect. I was present at one of his lectures. The abbé commenced by explaining the cause of dumbness to be the privation of hearing (which precludes the possibility of imitating sounds)--and not any absolute defect in the organ or instrument of speech. Such have been the labours of the immortal Abbé de l’Epée and his successor, the Abbé Sicard, that they have actually taught deaf and dumb persons how to communicate by speech, as well as signs, with the rest of humanity.

They have taught some to pronounce aloud any sentence written for them. This pronunciation is the effect of a compelled mechanical utterance, produced by the abbé placing his lips and mouth in certain positions and appearing to the scholar to make certain motions, which motions necessarily bring forth a sound more or less like that required.

The degree of force which it is necessary the scholar should apply to pronounce distinctly any word is regulated by the abbé pressing his arm gently, moderately or strongly.

[Sidenote: THE LITTLE SAVAGE]

I attended a lecture at which the Abbé Sicard showed to an audience the first mode of communication with the deaf and dumb. A boy about thirteen years of age, whom the abbé had not even seen, was sent out of the institution. A sheet of paper was brought on which were painted many of the most common objects, such as a horse, a carriage, a bird, a tree, and so on. Upon the abbé pointing these pictures out to the boy, the latter appeared delighted to show by signs that he fully comprehended the representation. These signs, attentively observed by the abbé, formed the basis of future conversation. To prove that _speech_ is merely a matter of imitation, the abbé produced a girl about seventeen years old, who had lost her hearing at the age of six. She had, therefore, acquired a small vocabulary of words and ideas such as might be expected from a child of six years of age. Her mode of enunciation was that of a young child. She pronounced “chat” “sa.” There had been a dog in the house where she passed her infancy, whose name was Toutou--she remembered the word and called every dog Toutou. This girl was a curious instance of the primary effects of education.

At this lecture the abbé stated a curious occurrence. He was once told that a blind man, on being asked to describe the sound of a trumpet, said he believed it to be of a red colour. He himself asked one of his deaf and dumb pupils to define his idea of scarlet, the pupil immediately replied: “The blast of a horn.”

As soon as the lecture was ended, our party proceeded to the top of the building in order to take a peep at the “Sauvage d’Aveyron.” When M. P----, the gentleman who introduced us to Abbé Sicard, made the proposal I was not aware that he was going to show us anything human. Accordingly I followed close at his heels, and after I had entered the room, perceiving only a man, a woman and a boy, I inquired for the savage. “This is he,” said M. P----, pointing to the boy, “Kiss him.” And without waiting for me to recover myself, he actually pushed me on to the lad, and in this attitude of kissing I was discovered when the ladies entered the apartment, the little savage holding me at the same time by the arms. I was not a little confused at this involuntary fraternal buss, which I was obliged to make, and which has been ever since a subject of merriment.

However, the savage no sooner saw ladies at the door than he sprang from me, went to the window, and, after looking out for a few moments, turned suddenly round and moved (for it could not be called walking) very fast up and down the room, without seeming to pay them the least attention.

I had by this time recovered myself, and grasped him firmly by the arm; but he took no manner of notice of me. He had a vacant countenance, but not an idiotic one. He broke out in a most extraordinary manner, however, a few minutes later, stamping with both his feet, rolling his body from side to side, and howling in a strange and dreadful tone.

This savage phenomenon was found in the forest of Aveyron, and here his history begins and ends. During the two years of his captivity he has not made any progress in knowledge or speech, and though in the possession of his senses he does not seem to have a human idea.