EMILIE DE COIGNY.
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
BY RICHARD B. KIMBALL.
EMILIE DE COIGNY AND THE STUDENTS.
A morning at Là Morgue is hardly as agreeable as a day at the Louvre, yet it is not without a certain fascination. Let but the influence once fasten on you, and it will be very hard to shake it off. At one period I confess it was to me almost irresistible, and I shudder sometimes when I recollect how punctually every morning at the same hour I took my place on one side of that fearful room—not for the purpose of inspecting the bodies of the suicides (I rarely turned to look at them), but to regard the countenances of the anxious ones who came to realize the worst, or to take hope till the morrow. Literally there are no spectators in that dismal solitude—if we except an occasional visit from the foreign sight-hunter, who comes in charge of a valet, and passes in and out and away to the "next place." In London or in New-York, an establishment so public would be thronged with persons eager to gratify a prurient curiosity. Not so in Paris. The French possess a sensibility so refined—it may be called a species of delicacy—that they cannot enjoy such a spectacle, can scarcely endure it: and if the tourist will bring the subject to mind, he will recollect that while his guide pointed out the entrance, he himself declined going into the apartment.
I know not how it happened, but, as I have remarked, the habit of visiting this spot every morning, was fastened on me. Never shall I forget some of the faces I encountered there. One image is impressed on me indelibly; it is that of a woman of middle age, with a very pale face, and having the appearance of one struggling with some wearing sorrow, who for two weeks in succession came in daily, and walking painfully up to the partition, looked intently through the lattice work, and turned and went away. I never before felt so strong an impulse to accost a person, without yielding to it. Indeed I had resolved to speak to her on the morning of the fifteenth day, but she did not come and I never saw her again. Who was she? did her fears prove groundless? what became of her? An old man I remember to have seen—a very old man, feeble and decrepit, who came once only, looked at the dead, shook his head despairingly, and tottered away: I know not if he discovered the object of his search. Young girls who had quarrelled with their lovers, and lovers who in moments of jealousy had been cruel to their sweethearts, would look anxiously in, and generally with relieved spirits pass out, almost smilingly, resolving no doubt to make all up before night should again tempt to suicide. Another incident I cannot omit, although it is impossible to recall it without a dreadful pang. One morning a pretty fair-haired child, not more than four years old, came running in, and clasping the wooden bar with one hand, pointed with her little finger through the opening, and with a tone of innocent curiosity said, "There's mamma!" The same moment two or three rushed in, and seizing the unconscious orphan, carried her hastily away. She had wandered after some of the family, and heard enough as they came from the fatal place to lead her to suppose her lost mamma was there, and so she ran to see. What could be the circumstances so untoward, that even the child could not bind the mother to life?
A long chapter might be written of the occurrences at my singular rendezvous, but I had no design, when I began, of alluding to them, and I will only remark here that, leaving Paris some time after for the south of Europe, I got rid of this nightmare impulse, and although I returned the following season I never again entered La Morgue....