But, alas! all this is very idle speculation; for I am not a great lady, and have no power whatever to turn dull dinners into gay suppers, let me wish it as much as I may.
LETTER LVIII.
Hôpital des Enfans Trouvés.—Its doubtful advantages.—Story of a Child left there.
Like diligent sight-seers, as we are, we have been to visit the hospital for les Enfans Trouvés. I had myself gone over every part of the establishment several years before, but to the rest of my party it was new—and certainly there is enough of strangeness in the spectacle to repay a drive to the Rue d'Enfer. Our kind friend and physician, Dr. Mojon, who by the way is one of the most amiable men and most skilful physicians in Paris, was the person who introduced us; and his acquaintance with the visiting physician, who attended us round the rooms, enabled us to obtain much interesting information. But, alas! it seems as if every question asked on this subject could only elicit a painful answer. The charity itself, noble as it is in extent, and admirable for the excellent order which reigns throughout every department of it, is, I fear, but a very doubtful good. If it tend, as it doubtless must do, to prevent the unnatural crime of infanticide, it leads directly to one hardly less hateful in the perpetration, and perhaps more cruel in its result,—namely, that of abandoning the creature whom nature, unless very fearfully distorted, renders dearer than life. Nor is it the least melancholy part of the speculation to know that one fourth of the innocent creatures, who are deposited at the average rate of above twenty each day, die within the first year of their lives. But this, after all, perhaps is no very just cause of lamentation: one of the sisters of charity who attend at the hospital told me, in reply to an inquiry respecting the education of these immortal but unvalued beings, that the charity extended not its cares beyond preserving their animal life and health—that no education whatever was provided for them, and that, unless some lucky and most rare accident occurred to change their destiny, they generally grew up in very nearly the same state as the animals bred upon the farms which received them.
Peasants come on fixed days—two or three times a week, I believe—to receive the children who appear likely to live, as nurslings; and they convey them into the country, sometimes to a great distance from Paris, partly for the sake of a consideration in money which they receive, but chiefly for the value of their labour.
It is a singular fact, that during the years which immediately followed the revolution, the number of children deposited at the hospital was greatly diminished; but, among those deposited, the proportion of deaths was still more greatly increased. In 1797, for instance, 3,716 children were received, 3,108 of whom died.
I have lately heard a story, of which a child received at this hospital is in some sort the heroine; and as I thought it sufficiently interesting to insert in my note-book, I am tempted to transcribe it for you. The circumstances occurred during the period which immediately followed the first revolution; but the events were merely domestic, and took no colour from the times.
M. le Comte de G* * * was a nobleman of quiet and retired habits, whom delicate health had early induced to quit the service, the court, and the town. He resided wholly at a paternal chateau in Normandy, where his forefathers had resided before him too usefully and too unostentatiously to have suffered from the devastating effects of the revolution. The neighbours, instead of violating their property, had protected it; and in the year 1799, when my story begins, the count with his wife and one little daughter were as quietly inhabiting the mansion his ancestors had inhabited before him, as if it stood on English soil.
It happened, during that year, that the wife of a peasant on his estate, who had twice before made a journey to Paris, to take a nursling from among the enfans trouvés, again lost a new-born baby, and again determined upon supplying its place from the hospital. It seemed that the poor woman was either a bad nurse or a most unlucky one; for not only had she lost three of her own, but her two foster-children also.