Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

Just as the illustrious visitors were going away, one pensioner who was minus a limb or two approached Madame de Maintenon and presented to her a plate bearing a piece of the regulation bread surrounded with flowers. “Permit me, madam,” he said, “to beg you to taste the bread we are fed with.” The court ladies present took a bite at it and complained of it to the king, who severely reprimanded the chief official of the establishment, and ordered him to supply bread of better quality.

The building, meanwhile, was not large enough to accommodate all the pensioners who had found refuge in the different religious retreats. The least infirm, therefore, had to yield precedence to their comrades, and Louvois ordered that forty companies should be despatched to Montreuil-sur-Mer, others being sent to Havre, Abbeville, and other fortified towns. Louvois died in 1691, much lamented by the pensioners.

In 1714 the king made a last and lengthy visit to the Invalides. In his will he commended the establishment to the particular care of his successors. “The foundation of the Invalides,” says M. Monnier, “is perhaps the one act of Louis XIV. which has remained popular.” In 1716 Peter the Great visited the Hôtel des Invalides, made a detailed inspection of it, and tasted the water drunk within its walls. On his return to Russia he founded an Hôtel des Invalides at St. Petersburg.

To skip over a somewhat uneventful period to the Revolution, the home of the pensioners was on the 14th of July, 1789, seized, without resistance, by the mob, who took possession of all the guns and carried them off.

The Constituent Assembly, despite the opposition of its military committee, maintained the Hôtel des Invalides. The Convention placed it under the special surveillance of the Legislative Body and, in some particulars, ameliorated the lot of the pensioners and their families. As for Napoleon, whether as First Consul or as Emperor, he took a great interest in the Invalides, whose population he did not allow to diminish; and the same solicitude has been displayed by the more pacific governments which have succeeded him.

Ever since the building was first inhabited, the pensioners – old, indeed, but still gay of heart – have from time to time amused themselves at the expense of their sometimes too curious visitors. Chief amongst the jokes played upon such persons must be mentioned the popularly-reported one of the “invalid with the wooden head.” This traditional joke dates from almost the foundation of the institution, and a manuscript in the library of the arsenal speaks of it in these terms: —

“As people of all kinds come to visit the house, certain playful soldiers have invented a method of mystification for those whom it is easy to take in, and to whom they give information as to whatever sights of curiosity or interest the place contains. They recommend them above all not to quit the place without having seen the invalid with the wooden head. When the proposition is assented to, they indicate his corridor and his room, and, as their comrades are in the conspiracy, they make their victims perform sundry journeys through different parts of the establishment in quest of a wooden head, which they might really behold if they looked at themselves in the glass. They are sent from floor to floor and from room to room by their tormentors, who invent all kinds of explanations for his absence, such as: – ‘He was here a moment ago; he has gone no doubt to get shaved, and will be back directly. Pray take a seat.’”

Unprovided, however, as the pensioners are with wooden heads, many of them, by their various forms of mutilation, afford a sufficiently curious spectacle to the crowd. Those veterans who have lost the use of both hands are termed “Manicros.” They have to be specially waited upon by their comrades, and as it is necessary to remunerate the latter for their services, a fund for the purpose has been established. There is a special table for those who, having been wounded in the jaw, cannot masticate their food. Easily digestible hashes, soups, etc., are prepared for them by the “sisters”; and their table is furnished with no niggardly regard for expense.

The death of Louis XIV. was keenly regretted by the pensioners, who sent representatives to his funeral clad in deepest mourning. The death of Louis XV., who was more beloved by his people generally, caused little sorrow at the Invalides, the pensioners viewing the funeral cortège, as it passed along, with frigid eye.

Coming to Napoleon, we find him conferring honour upon the Invalides by celebrating there the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille. He wished, moreover, on this solemn occasion, to consolidate the growing institution of the Legion of Honour. A salute of several cannons from within the precincts announced the emperor’s arrival. He took his seat upon a throne. Behind him were ranged the colonels-general of the guard, the governor, and the great officers of the crown. Meanwhile the empress, accompanied by the princesses, her sisters, and her maids of honour, had been received by the grand master of the ceremonies, who had led her to his tribune.

The cardinal legate, who was to officiate, took up his position beneath a daïs to the right of the altar, the cardinal archbishop of Paris and his clergy placing themselves on the left. Behind the high altar, on an immense amphitheatre, seven hundred invalids and two hundred pupils of the Polytechnic School were already stationed, while the nave contained the great officers and the members of the Legion of Honour.

When the cardinal legate had celebrated divine service the grand chancellor was conducted to the foot of the throne, proclaimed the object of the institution of the Legion of Honour, and enumerated the duties which were incumbent upon its members. This discourse at an end, Napoleon received the oaths of each member. The decorations were borne in basins of gold, and the first one was conferred upon the emperor himself, by the hand of his brother, Prince Louis, future king of Holland.

The most remarkable member of the Legion of Honour who ever dwelt in the Hôtel des Invalides was a widow named Brulon, who, in times past, disguised in male uniform, had seen no end of military service, fighting, sometimes by her husband’s side, with distinguished valour. She had been through seven campaigns, and bore the marks of three very decided wounds. Entering the ranks in 1811, she became a corporal the following year, a sub-lieutenant by royal mandate in 1822, and a member of the Legion of Honour in 1847. She died in 1848, deeply lamented by all who knew her, none of whom had ever seen her in feminine attire.

The Invalides pensioner, although, as we have seen, he will sometimes have his joke, is, as a rule, a morose old grumbler. His tendencies are those of a recluse. Although by the rules of the hotel he has to live, eat, drink, and sleep in common with his fellow pensioners, he keeps himself aloof, seldom seeks society, and is the reverse of communicative, “garrulous old age” being a phrase hardly applicable to one who, placed amongst men with the same experiences as himself, does not find them such appreciative and inspiring auditors as persons from the world outside. His friendships, in fact, are nearly always formed with civilians, though the decree which forbade the excursion of pensioners beyond the precincts of the hotel has reduced the number and intimacy of these friendships very considerably. A second decree, issued by the Minister of War, prohibited pensioners from performing any work in public places. Previously they had been employed to guard civic monuments, and to assist at constructions and demolitions; but it was found that the money they so earned was too often spent in a manner which neither morality nor good taste could sanction.

The grounds in front of the hotel contain a large flower-bed, beyond which are a number of small gardens belonging to the pensioners, who take a great pride in them, and adorn them with a beautiful display of flowers. It is noticeable, however, that all the gardens are alike, a grotto of shells, among other characteristic objects, belonging to each. These little plots of ground, so gay with bloom in the summer, are the delight of the children who come with their parents to visit some old grandfather who has lost a limb or two in the defence of his country.

The uncommunicativeness of the pensioner is attributed by M. Monnier to his having nothing to communicate. “If you ask him for his reminiscences,” says this admirable writer, “you will be astonished to find that, much as he has seen, he has learned little and retained little.” If, for instance, he is spoken to about Egypt, he declares that he has found Egypt just like any other country. “What about the inhabitants?” says the inquirer. “The same as any other inhabitants,” is the reply. “But the costumes?” “What costumes?” “Their different costumes. How are they dressed?” “Like us – they do not go naked.” “And the pyramids – those monuments of another age – which rise heavenwards and lose themselves in the clouds?” “Same thing as occurs here – at Boulogne and Calais, by the sea shore.” The visitor gives this gentleman up and passes to another, who has been to China, and who declares that the habits of the Chinese are identical with those of the French. “But how about their temples, their pagodas?” suggests the visitor. “Do you mean their houses?” “Yes, the places where they live, and those where they pray.” “Just like our own, with doors and windows – everything the same as here.” It is fair to suppose that M. Monnier, who is nothing if not a humourist, was so amused at the manner in which some few of the old soldiers had gone through the world with their eyes shut that he found the temptation to generalise this individual characteristic a trifle too strong for him.

The first stone of the Hôtel des Invalides was laid on the 30th November, 1670. Four years afterwards the place was ready for the reception both of officers and men. The plans of the whole building, with the exception of the dome, were drawn up by Libéral Bruant, who directed the works until his death. His duties were then taken up by Mansard, who made no change in his predecessor’s design, though he proposed the addition of a dome for which he submitted plans, and which was in due time constructed.

The Hôtel des Invalides stands in view of the Seine, at the extremity of a large esplanade planted with trees. In the middle of this esplanade there used to be a fountain which, under the First Empire, surmounted the lion of St. Mark, transported from Venice. Retaken in 1814 by the Austrians, the lion was replaced by an enormous fleur-de-lis, for which the Revolution of July substituted a bust of La Fayette. Bust and fountain have both disappeared.

On the Esplanade side of the Invalides are ranged a number of cannons, forming what is called the “triumphal battery,” which sends forth a peal of thunder on the occasion of some victory or state ceremony. The pieces are served by the pensioned artillerymen. The “triumphal battery” is particularly interesting from being largely composed of all kinds of foreign guns – Austrian, Prussian, Russian, Dutch, Venetian, Algerian, and Chinese, many of them taken in action.

Behind the “triumphal battery,” screened off by a sort of stone bastion, are the little gardens cultivated by the pensioners. Farther back is the principal façade of the hotel, three storeys high, and more than 200 metres wide, surmounted by a row of attics, and pierced with 133 windows. Projecting from the façade is a forepart enclosing a large arcade, of which the tympan represents Louis XIV. on horseback, accompanied by Justice and Prudence, two divinities to whom he did not always lend an ear. This group, the work of Couston, was maltreated by the Revolution, but restored by Cartellier. On the two sides of the entrance are the statues of Mars and Minerva, likewise by Couston. At the angles formed by the forepart and the façade are pedestals supporting four figures, in bronze, of chained nations, humbling themselves at the feet of the statue raised to Louis XIV. by Marshal de la Feuillade on the Place des Victoires and overthrown in 1792. These figures are executed by Desjardins.

An adequate description of the interior of the Invalides would fill a small volume. Remarkable by its architecture, it is interesting by the military relics and trophies preserved in it. A subterranean crypt, beneath the celebrated “dome,” contains the tomb of Napoleon, whose remains were conveyed thither from St. Helena.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

SOME MORE PARIS HOSPITALS

The French Hospital System – The Laënnec Hospital – The Houses of Assistance – The Quinze-Vingts – Deaf and Dumb Institutions – The Abbé de l’Épée – La Charité

THE Hôtel des Invalides suggests the hospitals of Paris in general; and to the briefest possible glance at these – inasmuch as we have already given much space to the famous Hôtel Dieu – the present chapter may be devoted.

“England” says Dr. Le Fort, “opens to the poor wretch without an asylum and without bread the doors of a workhouse; France those of a prison. To be without shelter is a misfortune in England; in France it is a crime. Unable to suppress poverty, our law will tolerate no manifestation of it. ‘Mendicity,’ as many a printed notice proclaims, is forbidden in the department of the Seine.”

Dr. Le Fort maintains that the Paris poor are treated with too little sympathy by the Legislature, and seems to think that if their wants were more readily relieved, many an indigent invalid, whose health has gradually given way beneath hunger and destitution, would not have found his way into hospital.

The Paris hospitals differ from those of London on one important point. In our metropolis all such institutions are supported by private charity, enjoying nothing, or next to nothing, in the way of state subventions. They are open either to the subscribers themselves or to those whom they choose to recommend. The hospitals of Paris, on the other hand, are practically state property, entirely independent of the control of the public. They are beneath the domination of the Prefect of the Seine and the Minister of the Interior; both represented by a director fully invested with their power. Side by side with the director exists a council of superintendence, which investigates and approves, or disapproves, the acts of that director, without being legally able to prevent them; for the whole of the executive is in the hands of the chief official, who is alone responsible. The director, it should be added, is seldom or never a physician, but a member of the administrative body.

The council of superintendence consists, amongst its other members, of the Prefect of the Seine, the Prefect of Police, a Councillor of State, a member of the Court of Appeal, a Professor of the Faculty of Medicine, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and two members of the Municipal Council, with a doctor and a surgeon attached to the hospital.

The medical service of the hospitals is effected by doctors and surgeons, aided by resident and non-resident assistants, sisters of charity, etc. The doctors and surgeons are appointed by competition, and they can practise, in the case of the former, till sixty-five, in that of the latter, till sixty years of age.

As regards the conditions under which patients are admitted to the hospitals, the first of these is not, as one might suppose, that the applicant be ill, but that he or she have been resident six months in the department of the Seine. This condition, which excluded poor patients coming to Paris from the provinces for special treatment, caused some years ago a good deal of lively criticism. Complaints, too, have frequently been made of the alleged extravagance of the administration and of the architectural embellishment of Paris hospitals, to the detriment of the patients upon whom in a direct manner the funds should, it was held, have been spent. Another defect which has been much commented upon is the inability of the surgeons to assign beds, on their own authority, to sick applicants whom they have pronounced to be in need of clinical treatment. Every morning, it should be explained, gratuitous advice is given at each hospital. Those applicants whose case is serious cannot, without further preliminaries, have beds assigned to them. The physician has first to represent their condition to the administrative director, and it is within the power of this latter functionary to grant or to refuse the admission. In practice, no doubt, the recommendation of the physician is acceded to; but the formality might well become, in some instances, a mischievous one.

During the day urgent cases can be received at the hospitals on the advice of the deputy medical officers. There exists, moreover, on the Parvis of Notre Dame, under the name of “central bureau of admission,” an establishment in which, from ten a.m. to four p.m., advice may be had from able physicians. Every morning the directors of the different hospitals send to this bureau a list of their vacant beds; and the consulting physician assigns them to applicants at his discretion.

Every invalid entering a hospital loses his or her individuality to take a number. Monsieur 6 and Madame 8 are the kind of appellations by which the patients are known. After having given in his or her name, age, address, and occupation at the registration office, the patient is taken up into the ward and undressed, receiving a grey cloak in exchange for the vestments put off. It used to be complained that these cloaks were passed from one patient to another without being in any way purified, whatever diseases they might be infected with. It may be hoped that this is no longer the case.

Soon after the new patient’s arrival he is visited by the house-physician, who prescribes for him a treatment which the physician-in-chief will confirm or rectify on his daily round next morning. At five a.m. the ward-servants come on duty, and then a clatter begins, the brush and the broom being freely plied. “So much the worse,” says Dr. Le Fort, a severe critic of the Paris hospital system, “for the patient who, having passed a sleepless night, is beginning to get a little repose.” In English hospitals, however, the same turmoil reigns at the same hour, and the sufferer from insomnia is as badly off as his Parisian fellow.

From eight to nine a.m. the physician goes his round of visits, accompanied by his assistants. He passes from bed to bed, feels pulses, looks at tongues, prescribes medicines, and so forth. At ten o’clock the breakfast-hour is sounded. Large cans, containing soup and vegetables, are brought into the ward. The ward-servants, or infirmiers present to the sister a succession of tin basins, into which she serves out the precise quantity of food ordered for the patients by the doctor. The quality of the food leaves nothing to be desired. The meat supplied is the best procurable, the fish is fresh, the vegetables irreproachable; but the cooking is the reverse of satisfactory. A mutton cutlet, cooked half an hour before dinner, and put in the oven to keep hot, comes sometimes to the patient’s bedside rather like a cinder; the joints are admirable, but as it is found convenient to carve them up some time before the meal, and keep them likewise in the oven, a cut off the joint occasionally means a slice of leather. Attempts have been made from time to time by the administration to reform this style of cooking, but the reformation has not yet, in practice, been effected.

After breakfast the patient reads or walks about. From one till three o’clock on Sundays and Thursdays he may receive visits from his family. At four o’clock the evening repast is served, and at eight the night commences, all conversation, as in English hospitals, abruptly ceasing. Thenceforth the repose of the vast wards is disturbed by nothing but the snoring of sleepers, and the sighs or groans of those to whose eyelids sleep will not come. The wards would now be in total darkness but for the faint glimmer of a little lamp suspended from the ceiling.

At No. 42 in the Rue de Sèvres stood the hospital or asylum (hospice) for incurable women, founded by the charity of Marguerite Roulié, assisted by Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, Grand Almoner of France. But the institution has now been transferred to Ivry in a large building, where incurable men are also received. The house in which the original hospital for incurables was established is now occupied by the Laennec Asylum, containing upwards of 300 beds, of which nearly fifty are for surgical cases. Then there are charitable houses for sick and for convalescent children. In the Rue de Sèvres (Nos. 93 to 95) is the monastery of the priests of the mission of St. Lazare, which, since 1816, has occupied the mansion of the Duc de l’Orges.

The chapel dedicated to St. Vincent de Paul, founder of the Lazarists, contains the relics of the saint, which were transferred to their present abode on the 29th of April, 1830. Seventeen bishops, with all the clergy of Paris and of the diocese, took part in the ceremony. The brothers of the Christian schools, also the sisters of Charity and of the Foundlings, assisted; in all upwards of 10,000 persons. This was for the Parisians the great event of the spring of the year 1830, which, however, in the month of July was to witness a manifestation of a very different character: the Revolution that brought Louis Philippe to the throne.

At the right corner of the Avenue of the Invalides stood, up to the time of the Revolution of 1789, a country house belonging to the sculptor Pigalle. The congregation of Notre Dame des Chanoinesses Régulières de Ste. Augustine, founded there towards 1820 a house of education, which has remained celebrated under the name of the Convent of the Birds. Beyond the Boulevard Montparnasse, which branches off at this point towards the Boulevard des Invalides, is the House of the Infant Jesus, founded in 1751 by the zeal of the Abbé Languet, Curé of St. Sulpice, by the liberality of the Marquise de Lassay, and under the patronage of Queen Marie Lesczinska, in favour of thirty poor and noble young ladies; to become in 1802 a hospital for sick children. Here the mortality is at the rate of two out of eleven, which is almost twice the average mortality in the hospitals for adults. “The idea of creating a special hospital for children,” said Professor Bouchardat, “excellent at first sight, is fatal for the unhappy ones who are admitted.” Contagious diseases spread, as a matter of fact, with particular rapidity among children. To counteract this evil the Hospice des Enfants Malades has been provided with a garden, 31,000 square metres in extent, so as to permit as much as possible the isolation of the little patients.

Besides the inmates of the Paris hospitals a great number of out-patients receive treatment within their walls.

An important institution in Paris, to which we have practically no counterpart in England, is one for the nursing of the indigent poor at their homes. It is admirably organised, and has done a great deal of inestimable work; and Dr. Le Fort is as proud of it as he seems ashamed of the Paris hospitals.

On the 25th of May, 1791, the municipality of Paris was charged by the administration with the distribution amongst the different parishes of the funds raised for the poor. On the 5th of August a municipal “Commission of Benevolence” was formed to consider the best method of administering aid to the indigent; and it is to this commission that the creation of the “offices of benevolence” is due. At the present time these offices relieve some twenty Paris mayoralties, besides freeing the hands of the hospital administration. Each office consists of the mayor of the arrondissement, as president; two assistants, twelve administrators, an unlimited number of commissionaires and sisters of charity, and a secretarial treasurer. Attached to each office are physicians and surgeons, midwives, etc. The scheme comprises, in each arrondissement, two or three “houses of assistance” where the poor come to seek aid for their sick friends, and where patients inscribed on the list of the indigent may have gratuitous consultations, medicine, and so forth. Fifty-three such houses are distributed over the capital.

Any poor or necessitous person wishing to be nursed at home through this organisation applies in person or by deputy to the office in his particular arrondissement, and if his case proves to be one requiring medical aid, the doctor attached to his section is instructed to visit him.