"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?'