VISIT TO THE MORGUE, AT PARIS.
(The Morgue, we should premise, is an establishment in Paris for the reception of all persons found dead in the City or its environs. Thither it is the duty of the police to convey the bodies, where they are exposed in a hall open to the public for a stated time,[4] when, if not identified, and claimed, they are interred in the neighbouring cemetery.)
"After describing the exterior, the Salle de l'Exposition, which is the only portion of the building, of course, with which the public are acquainted, the writer conducts us into the inner recesses of this house of death, the apartments of the superintendant.
"M. Perrin, is a little old man, who coughs incessantly. When I explained to him the object of my visit, he very politely offered to show me all the details of his administration, regretting much, as he said, that there was not so much variety as could be desired. 'But I will show you what I have—be pleased to walk up.'
"As we were climbing the narrow stairs, and he was informing me that his establishment was connected both with the prefecture and the police, with the one on account of the local expenses, with the other from its connexion with the public health, we were obliged to stand close against the wall to allow a troop of young girls to pass, well dressed, gay, but shivering with the cold, which blew from the river through the chink which lighted the stair.
"'These are four of my daughters. I have eight children. François, the keeper, has had four, and he has had the good fortune to get them all married. François is a kind father.'
"'So,' said I, 'twelve children then have been born in the Morgue. Dreams of joy, and conjugal endearments, and parental delights, have been experienced in this chamber of death. Marriage with its orange flowers, baptism with its black robed sponsors, the communion, and the embroidered veil, love, religion, virtue, have had their home here as elsewhere. God has sown the seeds of happiness every where.'
"'Papa, we are going to a distribution of prizes. My sisters are sure to get a prize. Don't weary, we will be back in good time.'
"'Go, my children,'—and all four embraced him.
"I thought of the body of the little Norman in the dreary room beneath, and of the mother who even now, perhaps, was anxiously looking for her from the window.
"'This is the apartment of François'. François did the honours with the activity of a man who is not ashamed of his establishment. His room is comfortably furnished; two modern pendules mounted on bronze, a wardrobe with a Medusa's head, a high bed, and a handsome rose-coloured curtain. If the room was not overburdened with furniture, if there was not much of luxury, yet, to those not early accustomed to superfluities, it might even seem gay. It represented the tastes, opinions, and habits of its master. Vases of flowers threw a green reflection on the curtains, for François is fond of flowers. Among his gallery of portraits were those of Augereau and Kleber, both in long coats, leaning on immense sabres, with peruques and powder. Napoleon is there three times.
"'Look at these jars,' said François, 'these are sweetmeats of my wife's making; she excels in sweetmeats.' I read upon them, 'gooseberries of 1831.' We left François's apartment which forms the right wing of the Morgue, while the clerk's house is on the left, and entered the cabinet of administration of M. Perrin.
"If François is fond of flowers, M. Perrin has the same penchant for hydraulics and the camera obscura; he draws, he makes jets from the Seine, by an ingenious piece of machinery of his own invention; while he was retouching his syphon, I asked permission to turn over the register, where suicides are ranged in two columns.
"The fatal 'unknown' was the prevailing designation; 'brought here at three in the morning, skull fractured, unknown;' 'brought at twelve at night, drowned under the Pont des Arts, cards in his pocket, unknown;'—'young woman, pregnant, crushed by a fiacre at the corner of the Rue Mandar, unknown;'—'new born child found dead of cold, at the gate of an hotel, unknown.'
"I said to M. Perrin that he must weary here very much occasionally during the long nights of winter.
"'No,' replied he good humouredly, 'the children sing, we all work, François and I play at draughts or piquet; the worst of it is, we are sometimes interrupted; a knock comes, we must go down, get a stone ready, undress the new comer and register him: that spoils the game; we forget to mark the points.'
"'And this is the way you generally spend your evenings?'—'Always, except when François has to go to Vaugirard at four o'clock: then he must go to bed earlier. Perhaps you do not know that our burying ground is at Vaugirard: as that burying ground is not much in fashion, we have been allowed to retain our privilege of having a fosse to ourselves.'
"'I understand,—it is a fief of the Morgue.'
"'You saw that chariot below near the entrance gate, in which the children were hiding themselves at play,—that is our hearse.'
"'And rich or poor, all must make use of your conveyance? If for instance a suicide is recognised, his relations or friends may reclaim him, take him home, and bestow the rites of sepulture on him at his own house?'
"'No, the Morgue does not give back what has been once deposited here. It allows the funeral ceremonies to be as pompous as they will, but they must all set out from hence; one end of the procession perhaps is at Notre Dame, while the other is starting from the Morgue. The Archbishop of Paris may be there; but François's place is fixed. It is the first.'
"'And the priests of Notre Dame, do they never make any difficulty about administering the funeral rites to your dead?'
"'Never!'
"'Not even to the suicides?'
"'There are no suicides for Notre Dame: one is drowned by accident, another killed by the bursting of a gun, a third has fallen from a scaffold. I invent the excuse, and the conscience of the priest accepts it. That's enough.'
"So, thought I! Notre Dame, which formerly witnessed the execution at the stake of sorcerers, alchymists, and gipsies on the Grande Place, has now no word of reprobation for the carcass of the suicide, once allowed to rot on the ground, or be devoured by birds. She asks not here what was his faith. The priest says mildly, 'Peace be with you.'
"We walked down, and François opened the first room, that which contains the dresses; habits of all shapes, all dimensions, hideously jumbled together; gaiters pinned to a sleeve, a shawl shading the neck of a coat; dresses of peasants, workmen, carters and brewers' frocks, women's gowns, all faded, discoloured, shapeless, flap against each other in the current of air which entered through the windows. There is something here appalling in the sight and sound of these objects, soulless, body-less, yet moving as if they had life, and presenting the form without the flesh. Your eye rests on a handkerchief, the property of some poor labourer, suddenly seized with the idea of suicide, after some day that he has wanted work.
"François, who followed the direction of my eyes to see what impression the picture produced on me sighed heavily.
"'Does it move you too,' said I? 'Are you discontented with your lot.—Unhappy?'
"'Not exactly! But, Sir, formerly, you must know, the dresses, after being six months exhibited, became a perquisite of ours; we sold them. Now they talk of taking the dresses from us.'
"I reassured François as to the intention of government, and assured him there was no talk of taking away the dresses.
"The second room, that which adjoins the public exhibition room, is appropriated for the dissection of those, the mode of whose death appears to the police to be suspicious. Its only furniture is a marble table, on which the dissections take place, and a shelf on which are placed several bottles of chlorate. This room is immediately above the room of M. Perrin. The dissecting table above just answers to the girls' piano below.
"In this room, which I crossed rapidly to avoid as much as possible the sight of a body extended on the plank, I saw the little girl, who had been stifled the night before in the diligence; she was a lovely child. The other figure was frightfully disfigured; scarcely even would his mother have recognised him.
"There remained only the public room; it is narrow, ill aired; ten or twelve black and sloping stones receive the suicides, who are placed on it almost in a state of nudity; the places are seldom all occupied, except perhaps during a revolution. Then it is that the Morgue is recruited; two more days of glory and immortality in July, and the plague had been in Paris.
"'It is true,' said M. Perrin, 'we worked hard during the three days, and we were allowed the use of two assistants. Corpses every where, within, without, at the gate, on the bank.'—
"'And your girls?'
"'During these days they did not leave their apartment, nor looked out to the street, nor to the river; besides, you are mistaken if you think the spectacle would have terrified them. Brought up here, they will walk at night without a light in front of the glass, which divides the corpses from the public, without trembling; we become accustomed to any thing.'
"Methought I heard the poor children, so familiar with the idea of death, so accustomed to this domestic spectacle of their existence, asking innocently of the strangers whom they visited,—as one would ask where is your garden, your kitchen, or your cabinet,—'where do you keep your dead here?'
"These were all the facts I could gather with regard to the establishment. I was opening the glass door to breathe the fresh air again, when the entrance of the crowd drove me back into the interior; they were following a bier, on which lay a body, from which the water dripped in a long stream. From one of the hands which were closely clenched, the keeper detached a strip of coloured linen, and a fragment of lace. 'Ah!' said he, 'let me look, 'tis she!'
"'Who is it?'
"'The nurse who was here this morning; the nurse of the little Norman girl. Good! they may be buried together.' And M. Perrin put on his spectacles, opened his register, and wrote in his best current-hand—unknown!"