THE CHOLERA—A MASQUE BALL—THE GAY WORLD—MOBS—VISIT TO THE HOTEL DIEU.
You see by the papers, I presume, the official accounts of the cholera in Paris. It seems very terrible to you, no doubt, at your distance from the scene, and truly it is terrible enough, if one could realize it, anywhere; but many here do not trouble themselves about it, and you might be in this metropolis a month, and if you observed the people only, and frequented only the places of amusement, and the public promenades, you might never suspect its existence. The weather is June-like, deliciously warm and bright; the trees are just in the tender green of the new buds, and the public gardens are thronged all day with thousands of the gay and idle, sitting under the trees in groups, laughing and amusing themselves, as if there were no plague in the air, though hundreds die every day. The churches are all hung in black; there is a constant succession of funerals; and you cross the biers and hand-barrows of the sick, hurrying to the hospitals at every turn, in every quarter of the city. It is very hard to realize such things, and, it would seem, very hard even to treat them seriously. I was at a masque ball at the Théatre des Varietés, a night or two since, at the celebration of the Mi-Careme, or half-Lent. There were some two thousand people, I should think, in fancy dresses, most of them grotesque and satirical, and the ball was kept up till seven in the morning, with all the extravagant gaiety, noise, and fun, with which the French people manage such matters. There was a cholera-waltz, and a cholera-galopade, and one man, immensely tall, dressed as a personification of the Cholera itself, with skeleton armor, bloodshot eyes, and other horrible appurtenances of a walking pestilence. It was the burden of all the jokes, and all the cries of the hawkers, and all the conversation; and yet, probably, nineteen out of twenty of those present lived in the quarters most ravaged by the disease, and many of them had seen it face to face, and knew perfectly its deadly character!
As yet, with few exceptions, the higher classes of society have escaped. It seems to depend very much on the manner in which people live, and the poor have been struck in every quarter, often at the very next door to luxury. A friend told me this morning, that the porter of a large and fashionable hotel, in which he lives, had been taken to the hospital; and there have been one or two cases in the airy quarter of St. Germain, in the same street with Mr. Cooper, and nearly opposite. Several physicians and medical students have died too, but the majority of these live with the narrowest economy, and in the parts of the city the most liable to impure effluvia. The balls go on still in the gay world; and I presume they would go on if there were only musicians enough left to make an orchestra, or fashionists to compose a quadrille. I was walking home very late from a party the night before last, with a captain in the English army. The gray of the morning was just stealing into the sky; and after a stopping a moment in the Place Vendome, to look at the column, stretching up apparently unto the very stars, we bade good morning, and parted. He had hardly left me, he said, when he heard a frightful scream from one of the houses in the Rue St. Honoré, and thinking there might be some violence going on, he rang at the gate and entered, mounting the first staircase that presented. A woman had just opened a door, and fallen on the broad stair at the top, and was writhing in great agony. The people of the house collected immediately; but the moment my friend pronounced the word cholera, there was a general dispersion, and he was left alone with the patient. He took her in his arms, and carried her to a coach-stand, without assistance, and, driving to the Hotel Dieu, left her with the Sœurs de Charité. She has since died.
As if one plague were not enough, the city is still alive in the distant faubourgs with revolts. Last night, the rappel was beat all over the town, the national guard called to arms, and marched to the Porte St. Denis, and the different quarters where the mobs were collected.
Many suppose there is no cholera except such as is produced by poison; and the Hotel Dieu, and the other hospitals, are besieged daily by the infuriated mob, who swear vengeance against the government for all the mortality they witness.
I have just returned from a visit to the Hotel Dieu—the hospital for the cholera. Impelled by a powerful motive, which it is not now necessary to explain, I had previously made several attempts to gain admission in vain; but yesterday I fell in fortunately with an English physician, who told me I could pass with a doctor's diploma, which he offered to borrow for me of some medical friend. He called by appointment at seven this morning, to accompany me on my visit.
It was like one of our loveliest mornings in June—an inspiriting, sunny, balmy day, all softness and beauty—and we crossed the Tuileries by one of its superb avenues, and kept down the bank of the river to the island. With the errand on which we were bound in our minds, it was impossible not to be struck very forcibly with our own exquisite enjoyment of life. I am sure I never felt my veins fuller of the pleasure of health and motion; and I never saw a day when everything about me seemed better worth living for. The splendid palace of the Louvre, with its long façade of nearly half a mile, lay in the mellowest sunshine on our left; the lively river, covered with boats, and spanned with its magnificent and crowded bridges on our right; the view of the island, with its massive old structures below, and the fine gray towers of the church of Notre Dame rising, dark and gloomy, in the distance, rendered it difficult to realize anything but life and pleasure. That under those very towers, which added so much to the beauty of the scene, there lay a thousand and more of poor wretches dying of a plague, was a thought my mind would not retain a moment.
Half an hour's walk brought us to the Place Notre Dame, on one side of which, next this celebrated church, stands the hospital. My friend entered, leaving me to wait till he had found an acquaintance of whom he could borrow a diploma. A hearse was standing at the door of the church, and I went in for a moment. A few mourners, with the appearance of extreme poverty, were kneeling round a coffin at one of the side altars; and a solitary priest, with an attendant boy, was mumbling the prayers for the dead. As I came out, another hearse drove up, with a rough coffin, scantily covered with a pall, and followed by one poor old man. They hurried in, and I strolled around the square. Fifteen or twenty water-carriers were filling their buckets at the fountain opposite, singing and laughing; and at the same moment four different litters crossed toward the hospital, each with its two or three followers, women and children, friends or relatives of the sick, accompanying them to the door, where they parted from them, most probably for ever. The litters were set down a moment before ascending the steps; the crowd pressed around and lifted the coarse curtains; farewells were exchanged, and the sick alone passed in. I did not see any great demonstration of feeling in the particular cases that were before me; but I can conceive, in the almost deadly certainty of this disease, that these hasty partings at the door of the hospital might often be scenes of unsurpassed suffering and distress.
I waited, perhaps, ten minutes more. In the whole time that I had been there, twelve litters, bearing the sick, had entered the Hotel Dieu. As I exhibited the borrowed diploma, the thirteenth arrived, and with it a young man, whose violent and uncontrolled grief worked so far on the soldier at the door, that he allowed him to pass. I followed the bearers to the yard, interested exceedingly to observe the first treatment and manner of reception. They wound slowly up the stone staircase to the upper story, and entered the female department—a long low room, containing nearly a hundred beds, placed in alleys scarce two feet from each other. Nearly all were occupied, and those which were empty my friend told me were vacated by deaths yesterday. They set down the litter by the side of a narrow cot, with coarse but clean sheets, and a Sœur de Charité, with a white cap, and a cross at her girdle, came and took off the canopy. A young woman, of apparently twenty-five, was beneath, absolutely convulsed with agony. Her eyes were started from their sockets, her mouth foamed, and her face was of a frightful, livid purple. I never saw so horrible a sight. She had been taken in perfect health only three hours before, but her features looked to me marked with a year of pain. The first attempt to lift her produced violent vomiting, and I thought she must die instantly. They covered her up in bed, and leaving the man who came with her hanging over her with the moan of one deprived of his senses, they went to receive others, who were entering in the same manner. I inquired of my companion how soon she would be attended to. He said, "possibly in an hour, as the physician was just commencing his rounds." An hour after this I passed the bed of this poor woman, and she had not yet been visited. Her husband answered my question with a choking voice and a flood of tears.