Chapter VII: Part 7

In the similar quarter of the Salpêtrière, similar results are obtained among the little girls afflicted with epilepsy, hysteria, _gâtisme_, and idiocy; they are taught to sew and to make artificial flowers; they are easily interested and amused by the concerts, the dramatic representations which are provided for them, and the ball of the Mi-Carême, in which they dance in company with the demented and insane women, is a great event in their lives.

The foundations of the older portions of this immense edifice were laid by Louis XIII, who began here the construction of an arsenal; the name, Salpêtrière, is derived from a manufactory of saltpetre (_salpêtre_) either in the buildings or in the neighborhood. By a decree of 1648, the buildings of the Salpêtrière or the Petit-Arsenal, situated in the Faubourg Saint-Victor near the confluence of the Seine and the Bièvre, were assigned as a prison for _filles et femmes débauchées_; and in 1653 this establishment was placed under the direction of the administrators of the _pauvres enfermez_, under the supervision of Mazarin. In 1656, the whole establishment was presented by Louis XIV, then in his minority, to the administration of the Hôpital-Général; the greater part of the present buildings date from this period. At this time, says a contemporary report, the asylum consisted of "two main buildings and of fifteen grand dormitories of thirty or forty _toises_ each, which are now occupied by six hundred and twenty-eight poor women of every quality that human misery could cause to conceive; one hundred and ninety-two children, from two to seven years of age, legitimate and bastards, exposed and abandoned to the care of Providence, and which are brought up by the poor women of the institution and shared among themselves as adopted, with the same affection as if they were their own, and twenty-seven officers and mistresses of the aforesaid dormitories, who are charged to watch over the conduct of the poor.

"Then there is a large new building which has been commenced for the reception of the married beggars...."

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.

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.

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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

One of the most remarkable of these curiosities, one which was the favorite show-place of the young doctors of the Cochin when they had guests and sufficient candles, is now no longer to be seen. This was a representation of the fort of Port-Mahon, in which he had been imprisoned by the English, cut in the face of the rock in high relief by an old soldier of the king, named Lescure, who had become a stone-cutter after his retirement from the army. This is situated in the quarry of Port-Mahon, under another quarry in the quarter of the Tombe-Issoire, which was discovered by Lescure, who kept his discovery to himself and passed his leisure in executing this record of his past career. When it was completed, he began to talk, and in order to enable his visitors to reach it easily he undertook the construction of a stairway uniting the two quarries; he had scarcely commenced it, when the earth gave way, and the unfortunate artist was crushed in the débris.

Notwithstanding the care taken to shore them up, the roofs of the abandoned quarries still give way occasionally under the superincumbent weight. In May, 1879, a house in the Passage Gourdon, Boulevard Saint-Jacques, sank through the earth; in the following year, a tree in the Luxembourg garden, near the Médicis fountain, did the same thing, and in July of this year, 1880, the lightning fell in this garden, and at almost the same moment two houses in the Boulevard Saint-Michel began to sink, as well as a large section of the sidewalk. These events naturally produced a great excitement in the quarter, and measures were taken to prevent a possible recurrence of such happenings. Proprietors proposing to build in these suspected districts are now required to conform to certain regulations of the inspector-general of quarries, who examines the subsoil under their properties.

Engraved from a flash-light photograph.]

The Cimetière des Saints Innocents,--said to have dated from the time of Philippe-Auguste,--which thus contributed to the first furnishing of the catacombs, was one of the institutions of mediæval Paris. Surrounded by its arcades of _charniers_, it had long been one of the most popular resorts of the city, and the Danse Macabre, earlier than the famous one at Bâle, painted along fifteen of these arcades, with inscriptions "to incite the people to devotion," only incited them to dance themselves. It was believed that the Duc de Berry had caused these paintings to be executed after the assassination of the Duc d'Orléans, the king's brother, in 1407, and the verses written under each personage were attributed to Jean Gerson, who was "inspired by serious contemplation to appeal, by the presentation of death, to his contemporaries of this fifteenth century--so abounding in calamities of every nature." The contemplation of death ceased to appal them,--for the space of six months, from August, 1424, to Lent, 1425, the people were in the habit of assembling in the cemetery on Sundays and fête-days, grotesquely attired to represent various classes of society, and, led by a mask disguised as Death, dancing frantically over the graves and along the charniers heaped with skeletons. In this _ronde infernale_ might be recognized some obnoxious abbot, or procureur, or bourgeois, or serjent, travestied and caricatured; the people, "seeking for the moment to forget their cares and sorrows, mocked at that death which they no longer scarcely feared, for it was, at this disastrous epoch, very often for them a deliverance." Too close familiarity with the _Camard_--"the flat-nosed," the death's-head--had bred the proverbial lack of respect.

There is not very much information available concerning this Danse Macabre,--it is known that it was the most important mural painting of the cemetery of the Innocents, and it is now attributed to Jehan d'Orléans, _valet de chambre_ and painter in ordinary to Charles VI, familiar companion of Jean, Duc de Berry. The first record that is known of it is found in the memoirs of a contemporary, printed under the title of _Journal de Paris sous Charles VI et Charles VII, à l'année 1424_, and which gives this "ITEM: _l'an iiiie xxiv fut faite la Danse Macabre à Saint-Innocent, et fut commencée environ le moys d'aoust et achevée au carême ensuivant_,"--begun in August, 1424, and finished in the following Lent. In the library of the city of Grenoble is the only known copy of a work illustrating this painting with wood-cuts,--"_cy finit la d[=a]se macabre imprimée par ung nommé Guy Marchant demeurant en Champ Gaillart à Paris le vingt-huitiesme iour de septembre mil quatre c[=e]t quatre vings et cinq_,"--printed by Guy Marchant, Champ Gaillart, Paris, September 28, 1485. The earliest known wood-engraving is the German one of Saint Christopher, dated 1423,--one year before the execution of the Danse Macabre on the walls of the Innocents. The famous Dance of Death in Bâle was not executed till 1439, and Holbein--to whom it has been attributed--was not born till 1498. The Paris dance is thus much the earlier, and in the reproduction given by Guy Marchant the varying buffoonery of the grotesque figures of death is remarkable,--they laugh, they become astonished, they become enraged,--the "serious contemplation," which they were to inspire, seems far away to our modern eyes, so conventional in their conception only of a conventional horror, silent, menacing, without any shade of humor.

Another image of this mediæval Death has been preserved to our day. This is the small alabaster statue, formerly known as the _Mort Saint-Innocent_; now preserved in the museum of the École des Beaux-Arts. It stood under the fifth arcade, when issuing from the church, in the charnier of "Messieurs les Martins," and had been executed by their order. It was kept enclosed in a box of which the church wardens had the key, and on All-Saints'-day it was exhibited to the people until noon of the next day. Although attributed to Germain Pilon, it is probably anterior to his time, and is now considered to be the work of a sculptor named François Gentil, a native of Troyes. As shown in the illustration, on page 278, it represents a corpse in the process of dissolution, "a much more striking figure than a skeleton;" it is about a mètre in height, stands upright, with a menacing expression, in its right hand it holds the folds of a shroud or winding-sheet, while the left rests upon the top of a species of shield on which is engraved the following quatrain, which was indicated by a dart placed between the fingers of the left hand:

"Il n'est vivant, tant soit plein d'art,
Ni de force pour résistance,
Que je ne frappe de mon dard,
Pour bailler aux vers leur pitance."

Which may be translated "There is none living, however artful or strong to resist, that I do not strike with my dart, to give to the worms their share." Underneath this somewhat trite observation is a sort of monogram, the upright of which is supported by an M. When the church, the cemetery, and the charniers of the Innocents were all suppressed in 1786, this figure was transferred to the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, afterward to the Musée des Monuments français, by M. Alexandre Lenoir, then to the Louvre, and finally to the Beaux-Arts.

"In the Middle Ages, Death played a very important part; in the arts, the games, and the ornamentation, his image was everywhere. The churches, the cemeteries, and the charniers were covered with epitaphs and with sinister phrases relating to death, and paraphrases of the _De profundis_ and the _Dies iræ_. At every step, says the author of the _Légende des trépassés_, the thought of the life eternal presented itself, sombre and terrible;--the melancholy chants and lamentations sobbing under the vaults of the churches hung with black, the hurried tolling of the death-bell which seemed to appeal for help and to sound the tocsin of eternity, the slow and solemn processions of the monks and the penitents intoning in the public squares the seven psalms of penitence, the great dance macabre performed in the cemeteries and the city streets, the representation of the Last Judgment by the brothers of the Passion, ... the bell-ringer of the dead making his nocturnal round,--all these formed an ensemble of awe-inspiring scenes well calculated to alienate the living from the frailties of this world."

After a drawing by A. Sauvage.]

The use of _charniers_ to receive the bones of the dead, disinterred to make room for more recent corpses in the century-old cemeteries, was peculiar to Paris, and began with the Cimetière des Innocents at an unknown date. The word seems to have first been used in France in the eleventh century;--the historian, Raoul Glaber, quoted in MM. Firmin-Didot's important work on Paris, previously cited, tells us that after a terrible famine, "as it was no longer possible to inter each body separately because of their great number, the pious people who feared God constructed in divers localities charniers, in which were deposited more than five hundred corpses." A dictionary of architecture, published in Paris in 1770, defines the word as meaning a "gallery or portico, formerly constructed around the parish cemeteries, in which the catechism is taught, and in the lofts of which are stored the fleshless bones of the dead. They may be found in several parishes of Paris." Their use was not entirely discontinued till the close of the last century. A pious regard for the relics of the departed led to the search for some honorable place in which to store this constantly increasing multitude of skeletons; sheds or penthouses were used, chapels, the lofts of cloisters and churches. In Paris there were six important churches, the cemeteries of which were surrounded by extensive galleries, lit by rich windows and ornamented with elaborate funerary monuments, and eight other parishes of minor importance; one of the latest built of these, that of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, prided itself on having its steeple and its charnier in miniature. The two most important were that of the Innocents, the popular cemetery, and that of Saint-Paul, the aristocratic one.

To the accidental and isolated places of storage in the former succeeded a series of symmetrical constructions, built independently of each other, yet rapidly succeeding one another, and apparently all by funds proceeding from pious legacies and donations in the fourteenth century. These different galleries enclosed from twenty to twenty-five arcades each, and were largely open to the air, so that their ghastly contents were plainly visible. Some of them, it is thought, had no roofs, or very imperfect ones. Notwithstanding these charnel-houses and the reeking soil of the cemetery itself, a deposit for refuse and offal of every description, this locality was one of the most thronged in the mediæval city. The present Halles Centrales and the Marché des Innocents, which occupied the same site from 1785, are but the legitimate successors of the busy commerce carried on in this locality from the earliest times. Louis XI authorized the construction, in the Rue de la Ferronnerie, against the walls of the charniers, of little stalls or sheds to be let to poor trades-people on condition that they did not display their merchandise on the public street, very narrow in this quarter,--a restriction which was speedily disregarded. "An ordinance of Henri II, on highways, directed that this street should be widened, May 14, 1554; it was not executed, and, fifty-six years later, to the day, Henri IV was assassinated here, May 14, 1610." It may be remembered that the temporary obstruction of the narrow street, which compelled the royal coach to halt, gave Ravaillac his opportunity. In 1669, the charnier des Lingères was ordered to be demolished, and two years later it was reconstructed to form the northern wall of the Rue de la Ferronnerie.

Even the very imperfect sanitary science of the Middle Ages recognized this cemetery as a centre of infection, and innumerable complaints were addressed to the civic authorities from reign to reign. Toward the middle of the eighteenth century, these protestations became more frequent, and various reports were made upon the subject. In 1737, the Parlement, by a decree dated July 9th, appointed a committee of experts, consisting of MM. Lemery and Hunault, physicians of the Hôtel-Dieu, and Geoffroy, _médécin chimiste_, all three of them members of the Académie des Sciences, to report "upon the grounds for the complaints which have been made for more than forty years, perhaps for more than a century, upon the infection caused by the Cimetière des Innocents." The report of this commission, dated May 22, 1738, gives some lively details concerning the manners and customs of the times that may be sought for in vain in other and less candid records. "Two causes of these evil odors may be observed,--the fecal matter which the inhabitants of the neighboring houses throw into the cemetery, partly in a trench that has been made along the sides of the houses that are on the Rue de la Ferronnerie, and the infection from the graves during the time that they are open and being refilled. The first cause is the most obvious; the second does not seem to exercise any injurious effect on the health of the neighborhood.... Do the exhalations from the cemetery augment in time of epidemics?... The experience of the past does not seem to furnish any grounds for these slight suspicions.... The soil is not exhausted, but it is less fit to bring about the dissolution of the dead bodies."

Various remedies were proposed in the conclusion of the report: "Prevent the lodgers in the neighboring houses from throwing their water, urine, and filth into the cemetery, and, to this end, increase the number of _lunettes_ in the closets and close the windows up with gratings." This particularly concerned the row of houses along the Rue de la Ferronnerie, which formed one of the long sides of the cemetery; they were five stories in height, and had been reconstructed under Louis XIV, eighty years before. A typical detail of the period may be found in the fact that there were "lunettes" only on the first floor; the dwellers in the upper stories found it more convenient to throw their refuse out of the windows than to carry it down-stairs. In fact,--says MM. Firmin-Didot's editor, from whom we gather these details,--had the private individuals any right to complain when, in building the palace of Versailles, only one thing had been forgotten,--the closets? "And yet these were the good old times, and Monsieur _Purgon_ [of Molière's _Malade Imaginaire_] was then held in great honor!"

The commission also made several recommendations concerning the cemetery, which to-day would be thought to be very insufficient. It was proposed to level the ground, to divide it into squares, to dig graves in a diagonal direction opposite to the one formerly followed, to oblige the grave-digger to take out the bones each time, to have only one common grave open all the time--instead of three, to double the size of the graves, to cover the bodies with eight inches or a foot of earth--according to the season, to open the graves by preference only in the winter, to burn the bones or transport them to the new grounds of the Porcherons, acquired by the chapter of Saint-Germain, and to exchange part of the soil taken from the graves for new soil from this locality. Another report, made by the commissioner Laumônier in 1780, advised the establishment of a provisional cemetery under the charge of the Capuchins,--"it were better," said the commissioner, "to have monks for a guardian rather than a drunkard, like that of the Innocents."

This was Maître Poutrain, who had been _fossoyeur_ here for thirty years, and who made application to be transferred to the new cemetery as soon as he heard that his old one was to be suppressed. It was not suppressed, however, till six years later, and in 1785 we find another commission from the Académie des Sciences taking testimony and adopting the recommendations of the grave-digger Poutrain as though he had been a member of their own learned body. They even accepted this statement from him:--there was a square tomb in the cemetery, near the church, then only some three feet high, and which, when he commenced his labors in the grounds, had been so high that he could scarcely reach the top with his hands. That the soil had risen, however, cannot be doubted. There were two thousand or three thousand burials a year; Poutrain said he had officiated at ninety thousand himself during his term of office; and M. Héricart de Thury has estimated the number of inhumations in the course of six centuries as high as one million two hundred thousand. This has even been considered as below the probable number, on a basis of three thousand a year, and not allowing for famines, pestilences, epidemics, and wars,--all in a space estimated at nine thousand six hundred square feet.

Another account says that the cemetery was closed on the 1st of December, 1780, in consequence of the following incident: In July of that year, a shoemaker of the Rue de la Lingerie, having occasion to go down into his cellar to get some leather, was driven back by an insupportable odor. His neighbors having been called in and due investigation made, it was discovered that the foundation wall had yielded to the pressure of the earth of the cemetery, and that the cellar was half full of decomposing bodies, mostly from a trench that had been opened on that side of the grounds in the latter part of the preceding year, for the reception of some two thousand corpses. The police forbade the gazettes and journals to give any publicity to this incident, and a commission was appointed to investigate. A decree of the Archbishop of Paris, June 10, 1786, definitely closed the cemetery, the earth was screened, the bones placed in sacks and transported in covered carts to the old quarries under the plain of Montsouris in the locality called the Tombe-Issoire, as has been stated. Those which it had been intended to transport to the cemetery of the Faubourg Montmartre were, for want of space, taken to Montrouge.

The vegetable market which had been held in the Rue de la Ferronnerie was transferred to the site of the old cemetery, and for a number of years this Marché des Innocents, with its four or five hundred immense red parasols, under which the vendors sheltered themselves, was one of the sights of Paris. In 1813, galleries of wood were constructed around the enclosure for this purpose. In the centre was placed the old fountain from the corner of the Rues Aux Fers and Saint-Denis, with the five naiads in relief sculptured by Jean Goujon supplemented by three more, more or less in the same style, by Pajou. Since the reconstruction of the Halles Centrales, the Marché des Innocents has been transformed into a public garden, surrounding this monumental fountain.

As early as 1766, the Parlement of Paris had taken up the very important reform of suppressing all interments within the city, "a custom which had its origin only in the growth of the city which, in extending its limits, had gradually taken into its enclosure the cemeteries originally outside its walls." A municipal decree, in nineteen articles, forbade any further burials in the cemeteries then within the city walls, after the first day of January, 1766, or in churches, chapels, or vaults, excepting under certain limitations. This sanitary measure was, however, so vehemently opposed by all the curés of Paris that it was never enforced; the question of compelling all interments to take place in suburban cemeteries was not seriously taken up till 1804, when the grounds of Père-Lachaise were purchased by the city, and, to this day, the only interments that are forbidden within the built-up limits of the capital are the temporary ones, and the common ones for the poor,--the _fosses temporaires_, and the _fosses communes_.

By a grotesque arrangement, the funeral arrangements in Paris were formerly in charge of the town-criers, the _crieurs de corps et de vins_, the _crieurs-jurés_, who held a monopoly of these public announcements, and who bawled through the streets, indifferently, the proclamation of _choses estranges_ which were lost, mules, children, horses, and the like, of wine to sell--when they carried a gilded drinking-cup, and of deaths--when they wore a sort of dalmatic sown with black "tears" and death's-heads. Their number was at first fixed at twenty-four, then at thirty, and an edict of January, 1690, raised it to fifty. They had a reprehensible fashion of announcing deaths and ringing their bell through the streets at all hours of the night: "Pray to God for the soul of Messire Suchaone, who has just died! Awake, all ye who sleep, and pray God for the dead!" The Parisian bourgeois, suddenly aroused from slumber by this hoarse appeal under his windows, entered into a state of fright, or of fury, according to his temperament. These _crieurs_ and _clocheteurs des trépassés_, moreover, formed a wealthy and influential corporation which held the monopoly of what is to-day the _Pompes funèbres_,--they furnished the serge, the robes, the mantles, the chaperons or hoods, the hangings, and the torches for the funerals, they even furnished the hired mourners when required, who preceded the cortège to the graves in black garments, "ringing their bells, drawing lugubrious sounds from grotesque instruments, appealing to the people to pray for the defunct, making an infernal uproar, and, in order to honor the dead, nearly killing the living." This corporation was in existence after 1789, but the hospitals and hospices had obtained the right of furnishing hangings for funeral ceremonies, and a decree of the year XII transferred it to churches and consistories.

The arrangements for interments, generally, were in harmony with the condition of the overcrowded and reeking cemeteries,--the bodies were usually transported to their last resting-places on men's backs or by their arms, the poor enjoyed the luxury of a bier only during this journey and were thrown half-naked into the common grave. From this period of the Revolution, these summary processes were forbidden; the bodies were obliged to be carried in wagons or cars, excepting those of children, though sometimes several coffins were placed in the same vehicle. For more seemly processions, the cars were drawn by two horses, walking, accompanied by an _ordonnateur_ and three porters in costume, or even by four _aumôniers_ on horseback supporting the canopy. In the latter case, the hearse would be furnished with no less than eight horses. For these sumptuous occasions, however, the _jurés-crieurs_ would deem it necessary to accompany the funeral cortége with a convoy of saddle-makers, harness-makers, and wheelwrights, in case the heavy funeral car should happen to upset or to become stalled in the mud. The presence of these auxiliaries in their working costumes was concealed as much as possible; they were placed in the hearse, sitting on the coffin itself, and concealed from view by the heavy black curtains of the vehicle,--here they amused themselves by playing at dice on the bier, drinking, if they had had the forethought to bring a bottle along, or sometimes by showing their faces through the openings of the black curtains and making grimaces at the four mounted aumôniers, whose dignity forbade them to reply in kind.

A certain contractor, a Sieur Bobée, was authorized by the Préfet of the Seine, M. Frochot, in 1801, to furnish to wealthy families the means necessary to give their interments the desired pomp, and he was, in fact, the first organizer of the Pompes funèbres. He collected, at his own cost and risk, all the requisite material, and drew from his wealthy clients a sufficient recompense to reimburse him for the gratuitous burial of the poor, which was required of him. He received, also, the proceeds of the funerary tax, which provided the indigent with a shroud, a coffin, and the necessary transportation to the grave. Under his successors, the business gradually enlarged till, in 1869, the municipal administration judged it expedient to purchase a site and erect buildings that should assure a sufficient establishment for the future. The war with Germany delayed the completion of this undertaking, but the new buildings of the Pompes funèbres, offices, stables, store-rooms, etc., all complete, were finally inaugurated in 1873. They were constructed in the name, and at the cost, of the city of Paris, and the funerary establishment pays a rent of two hundred thousand francs. These buildings are situated on the site of the former abattoirs de la Villette, on the Rues Curial and d'Aubervilliers. In the manufactory is kept a large stock of coffins and caskets of all kinds, and a reserve stock is always on hand in case of epidemics; in the carriage-houses are nearly three hundred and fifty vehicles of all kinds, and in the stables, three hundred and sixty-four horses,--two hundred and ninety-one black ones.

The service of the Pompes funèbres is placed under the surveillance of the Préfet of the Seine. The administration centrale may be addressed directly by telephone, to 104 Rue d'Aubervilliers, when required, or application may be made to the bureau of the Pompes funèbres in each Mairie, or to their agents in each arrondissement. There is a conseil d'administration of thirteen members, elected, ten by the city churches, one by the consistory of the Reformed Church, one by the consistory of the Confession d'Augsbourg, and one by the Israelite consistory. This conseil represents the _fabriques_--that is to say, the revenues and property--of the parochial churches, divided into ten circonscriptions, and the consistories of the non-Catholic churches of the city. There is also a vicar-general, delegated by the Archbishop of Paris, who is a member of the conseil, and ranks next to the president.

Alabaster statuette, one mètre high, kept in the charniers of Saint-Innocent; uncovered on All-Saints'-day.]

The expense of a funeral, of course, varies very greatly. An ordinary coffin costs from eight francs to forty-four. The municipal tax, which brings in to the city treasury annually some eight hundred and sixty thousand francs, is included in the cost of each class of funeral, and varies from forty francs for the first and second classes to six francs for the ninth. For the _convois catholiques_, the expense is from eight thousand to ten thousand francs for the first class; for the _convois protestants_, four thousand two hundred to seven thousand five hundred for first class; for the _enterrements israelites_, two thousand nine hundred at the most. The ninth, or cheapest, class of funeral, of all these may be had for eighteen francs seventy-five centimes for the Catholic, nine francs for the Protestant, and three francs for the Israelite. These figures vary according to the parish, the size of the church or temple, etc., but they generally include the decoration of the residence, the draping of the place of worship in which the service is held, the payment for this religious service, etc., but not the cost of the coffin, of the land in the cemetery, of the tickets of invitation or notices of death, and other details. In the Jewish service, there is an item of a thousand francs for the choir, either at the dwelling or in the cemetery. For the _convois civils_, where there is no official religious service, the price varies from eighteen hundred and fifty to twenty-four hundred francs for the first class to nine francs for the ninth. For incinerations, the cost is about the same, adding the tax to be paid the city,--three hundred francs for the first class, and fifty for the sixth, seventh, and eighth. A permit for a gratuitous interment may be obtained by presenting at the Mairie a certificate of indigence obtained from the Commissaire de Police upon application sustained by two witnesses in good standing.