Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. Volume 2

As organized at present, the Bicêtre contains three thousand one hundred and fifty-three beds, and the Salpêtrière three thousand eight hundred and eleven. The latter includes also a clinic for nervous diseases, with consultations for out-door patients, the former clinic of Doctor Charcot, and one service of electro-therapeutics, for both in-door and out-door patients, which attracts many from outside. There is a very curious medical museum; and the institution itself claims to be one of the great centres of scientific research.

An interesting feature of the general administration of the Parisian hospitals is the arrangement made by the internes, the graduates in medicine and pharmacy in the in-door service of the institution, for providing themselves with the necessary meals. These young men are paid by the Assistance Publique the modest sums of from six hundred to a thousand francs a year, from the first to their fourth year, out of which they have to provide for themselves until they are de permanence. They therefore make provisions for dining in common, and their salles de garde are cheerful and very informal gathering-places, gay and hospitable, liberally adorned with inscriptions, engravings, and paintings, permeated with the souvenirs and traditions of the institution to which they are attached. At the Hôtel-Dieu, owing to the size of the hospital and the number of clinics, the number of internes and externes, bénévoles and provisoires, and their friends, is so great that the social character of the salle de garde naturally suffers; each one dines hastily, occupies himself only with his invited guest, and, after coffee, if his duties do not claim him, goes off in search of some shady promenade, which the cloisters of the Hôtel-Dieu—unlike the green courts of the Bicêtre and Salpêtrière—do not offer him. Consequently, the gastronomical qualities of the repast assume a considerable importance, and the duties of the économe become proportionally heavy.

This very useful official is a comrade endowed with the necessary domestic and executive qualities, who assumes the onerous task of directing this refectory. He must be a gourmet, of course, this is indispensable; he must have imagination and experience in order to prepare and to suitably vary the ménus; he must be economical, orderly, judicial, and discriminating, so as to know which rebellions and protests are to be heeded and which ignored, and to preserve suitable relations with his cantinière. The interne on duty alone has a right to have his repasts served by the Assistance Publique; as these are constantly changed, the administration furnishes the equivalent of what it owes in provisions, which are turned into the common stock. It also furnishes the necessary utensils and cooking apparatus. The cantinière must have given proof of her worth either as a cook in the hospital or as a cordon bleu in the city. She must also be provided with a husband or some other connection capable of serving at table. At the end of each repast, the économe marks on a list of his subscribers a cross opposite the name of each participant, or two or more crosses if he has had guests. At the end of the month, the permanent expenses are added up, wages, etc., which sum is divided into as many parts as there are internes. This is a fixed amount, the proportionate share of which must be paid whether the subscriber has dined only once, or not at all. Then the cost of the number of meals actually consumed is added up and divided by the number of crosses. This cost of each meal varies greatly in the different hospitals, those outside the city walls being able to provide more cheaply. Thus, in 1893, it was one franc seventy-five centimes at the Hôpital de la Charité, and only eighty-five centimes at the Bicêtre. The presence of the monthly fixed charges which have to be met brings about the apparent anomaly that the more meals the young doctor eats in his messroom the less proportionally do they cost him.

As a recompense for his labors in the general service, the économe has the privilege of presiding in the centre of the table, of carving, and of sitting as umpire on all the manifestations. When any one of the habitués of the common table has passed an examination, assisted his master in some difficult operation, or otherwise had a chance to distinguish himself, it is in order for him to celebrate the great occasion by discreet libations in which his friends may share. As it sometimes happens that these fortunate ones—entirely through timidity and modesty—omit to mention their professional successes at the hospitable board, the custom has arisen of proclaiming their virtues for them and thus causing them to "manifest" themselves. "But, as the examinations are rare, and the flasks of Chartreuse small, some one is called upon to manifest, on the slightest provocation, for the promulgation of an unseasonable political opinion, for a bad pun, for anything you please. The manifesteur is made aware of the fate which menaces him by a clinking of bottles and plates, by a hammering with the backs of knives;—however, his condemnation is not definite until the économe has pronounced judgment upon it. He is careful to see that it is not always the same culprit who is executed."

As a contrast to the Hôtel-Dieu, the Hôpital Cochin, in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, has one of the smallest salles de garde in Paris. In recompense, its diners have under their feet an immense city, with streets, open places, and many inhabitants, a city cool in summer and warm in winter, and which, for a long period of time, the internes of this hospital had been in the habit of considering as an annex to their dining-room. It is not every one who would take this view of the catacombs; but the practice of medicine and surgery does not lend itself to the cultivation of squeamishness. Every evening, accordingly, exploring parties were organized to visit these subterranean streets; underneath the hospital itself is a large open square, from which radiate, in every direction, lanes and avenues. These the internes at first explored by means of a compass, but, as a result of some judicious meditation before the commemorative slab recording the death by starvation of Philibert Aspaut, concierge of the Val-de-Grâce, lost in the catacombs in 1793, they took the trouble to unearth an old plan in the Musée Carnavalet and draw up a new one, probably now one of the best in existence. In consequence of this prudent conduct, they have never had any losses to deplore; but the frequency of these unprofessional rambles finally aroused the administration to action, and the hospital entrance to the underground city was closed. Since then, the disconsolate diners have had to seek other distractions;—it is said that they are greatly given to equitation, but as they have no horses in their salle de garde, they paint them by squadrons on the walls, as illustrated on page 259.

The catacombs are those portions of the ancient stone-quarries under the city which have been used as municipal ossuaries since 1786. As far back as the Roman epoch, the inhabitants of Lutetia were in the habit of drawing their building material from these subterranean quarries, of clay, gypsum, and limestone. The clay, argile plastique, is found in the region of Passy and Grenelle; the zone of gypsum extends from Montmartre to Bercy, and the limestone, rich in fossils, is found under Passy and most of the city on the left bank of the river, from the Jardin des Plantes on the east to the former barrière de Vaugirard on the west. This stone was largely used in the construction of ancient and mediæval edifices,—the Palais des Thermes, the portal of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, a portion of Notre-Dame, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and the old Hôtel-Dieu, were all supplied from the quarries of the Faubourgs Saint-Jacques and Saint-Michel. As the capital increased, these excavations were carried farther; those nearer the centre of the city were gradually filled up after being exhausted of their building material. By 1774, they had become the refuge of numerous thieves and vagabonds, and in consequence of the many accidents caused by the sinking of the earth over them, in the quartiers Saint-Jacques, of the Observatoire, and of Montrouge, in 1774, 1777, and 1778, an official inspection was ordered by the government, and a corps of engineers was directed to carry out all the necessary measures. The credit of the idea of using the quarries of Montsouris and of Montrouge as a receptacle for the bones from the ancient cemetery of the Innocents is ascribed to M. Lenoir, lieutenant général de police, as early as 1780; but it was not till November, 1785, that M. Guillaumot, inspecteur général of the quarries, received definite orders to prepare a suitable place for these relics of mortality.

This officer selected the quarries under the plain of Montsouris in the locality known as the Tombe-Issoire—it was said from a famous brigand of the time of Louis VII, who ravaged this neighborhood, because of their extent and their proximity to the city. It was proposed to deposit in this ossuary not only the bones from the Innocents, but from all the other cemeteries, charniers, and sepulchral chapels of Paris. On the 7th of April, 1786, the quarries were formally blessed by the clergy and consecrated to their new use, and on the same day the transportation of the bones from the Innocents was begun. It was carried on constantly, at the close of each day, in funerary cars covered with a pall and followed by surpliced priests, chanting the service for the dead. This operation, interrupted only during the heat of summer, was completed in less than fifteen months; and the catacombs—so called from this date—have since received a vast number of bones from other cemeteries and churches, and also of the victims of the many street revolutions of the capital. During the Revolution and the Terror, a number of bodies were also thrown in here, and down to 1810 no attempt was made to arrange the bones, which were piled up like rubbish. It is estimated that these subterranean crypts now contain the remains of nearly three millions of persons,—the guide-books say six.

In 1810, a new organization and rearrangement of the catacombs were carried out, the falling roofs were propped up, the galleries cleaned out, ventilated, and dried, and the bones all symmetrically arranged along the walls—the large bones of the arms and legs piled up like cord-wood, presenting their ends, and interrupted by occasional rows, or centre-pieces, or cornices of skulls, and the smaller bones thrown in behind them, between them and the wall, so as to be out of sight. Various attempts at grotesque or fanciful designs, wrought out with craniums and tibias, break the monotony of these grisly corridors. Between 1792 and 1814, the catacombs permitted the suppression of sixteen cemeteries, and they still receive the bones that are turned up in the course of various excavations in the city. Visitors were formerly admitted to explore them every day, but in consequence of the numerous accidents which happened, greater restrictions were imposed, and it is now permitted to make this visit only on the first and third Saturdays of each month, and when furnished with a permit obtained from the Préfet of the Seine. The entrance is on the Place Denfert-Rochereau, and the exit on Rue Dareau; the journey is made under the care of a guide, and the visitor—who is advised to wear sufficiently thick clothing and heavy shoes—is furnished with a candle and a holder for which he pays fifty centimes.

The total number of entrances is sixty-three, many of them outside the city; these galleries are sufficiently well ventilated by numerous openings, and dry. The visitors traverse a certain route, in a general southerly direction, inspecting the various curiosities on the road and the great Ossuaire. In the latter are included several of these,—the Fontaine de la Samaritaine, so called from an inscription which recalls the words of the Saviour to the Samaritan woman; the Tombeau de Gilbert, which is only a column supporting the roof to which was given the form of a sepulchral monument; the Lampe sépulcrale, the Crypte de Saint-Laurent, similar constructions, and the geological collection formed by M. Héricart de Thury, chief engineer of mines and inspector-general of quarries in 1810, which contains specimens of all the earths and minerals encountered in excavating the quarries.

There were formerly to be seen in the Samaritan fountain numerous red fish, which were placed there in 1813 and thrived, but have now disappeared. The quarries are not without animal life,—in the region of the Jardin des Plantes have been found various insects, species of coleoptera, myriapod and thysanoura, and several small crustacea, all more or less blind. One of these latter, a species of small crayfish, inhabits the waters of a little stream which traverses the Ossuaire. The bones of the combatants of 1789 and 1790, and those of the victims of September, 1792, are collected and arranged by themselves in this ossuary. The walls of the galleries are set off with numerous quotations drawn from sacred literature and engraved on pillars in French, Latin, Greek, Italian, and Swedish.

One of the most remarkable of these curiosities, one which was the favorite show-place of the young doctors of the Cochin when they had guests and sufficient candles, is now no longer to be seen. This was a representation of the fort of Port-Mahon, in which he had been imprisoned by the English, cut in the face of the rock in high relief by an old soldier of the king, named Lescure, who had become a stone-cutter after his retirement from the army. This is situated in the quarry of Port-Mahon, under another quarry in the quarter of the Tombe-Issoire, which was discovered by Lescure, who kept his discovery to himself and passed his leisure in executing this record of his past career. When it was completed, he began to talk, and in order to enable his visitors to reach it easily he undertook the construction of a stairway uniting the two quarries; he had scarcely commenced it, when the earth gave way, and the unfortunate artist was crushed in the débris.

Notwithstanding the care taken to shore them up, the roofs of the abandoned quarries still give way occasionally under the superincumbent weight. In May, 1879, a house in the Passage Gourdon, Boulevard Saint-Jacques, sank through the earth; in the following year, a tree in the Luxembourg garden, near the Médicis fountain, did the same thing, and in July of this year, 1880, the lightning fell in this garden, and at almost the same moment two houses in the Boulevard Saint-Michel began to sink, as well as a large section of the sidewalk. These events naturally produced a great excitement in the quarter, and measures were taken to prevent a possible recurrence of such happenings. Proprietors proposing to build in these suspected districts are now required to conform to certain regulations of the inspector-general of quarries, who examines the subsoil under their properties.

The Cimetière des Saints Innocents,—said to have dated from the time of Philippe-Auguste,—which thus contributed to the first furnishing of the catacombs, was one of the institutions of mediæval Paris. Surrounded by its arcades of charniers, it had long been one of the most popular resorts of the city, and the Danse Macabre, earlier than the famous one at Bâle, painted along fifteen of these arcades, with inscriptions "to incite the people to devotion," only incited them to dance themselves. It was believed that the Duc de Berry had caused these paintings to be executed after the assassination of the Duc d'Orléans, the king's brother, in 1407, and the verses written under each personage were attributed to Jean Gerson, who was "inspired by serious contemplation to appeal, by the presentation of death, to his contemporaries of this fifteenth century—so abounding in calamities of every nature." The contemplation of death ceased to appal them,—for the space of six months, from August, 1424, to Lent, 1425, the people were in the habit of assembling in the cemetery on Sundays and fête-days, grotesquely attired to represent various classes of society, and, led by a mask disguised as Death, dancing frantically over the graves and along the charniers heaped with skeletons. In this ronde infernale might be recognized some obnoxious abbot, or procureur, or bourgeois, or serjent, travestied and caricatured; the people, "seeking for the moment to forget their cares and sorrows, mocked at that death which they no longer scarcely feared, for it was, at this disastrous epoch, very often for them a deliverance." Too close familiarity with the Camard—"the flat-nosed," the death's-head—had bred the proverbial lack of respect.

There is not very much information available concerning this Danse Macabre,—it is known that it was the most important mural painting of the cemetery of the Innocents, and it is now attributed to Jehan d'Orléans, valet de chambre and painter in ordinary to Charles VI, familiar companion of Jean, Duc de Berry. The first record that is known of it is found in the memoirs of a contemporary, printed under the title of Journal de Paris sous Charles VI et Charles VII, à l'année 1424, and which gives this "Item: l'an iiiie xxiv fut faite la Danse Macabre à Saint-Innocent, et fut commencée environ le moys d'aoust et achevée au carême ensuivant,"—begun in August, 1424, and finished in the following Lent. In the library of the city of Grenoble is the only known copy of a work illustrating this painting with wood-cuts,—"cy finit la dāse macabre imprimée par ung nommé Guy Marchant demeurant en Champ Gaillart à Paris le vingt-huitiesme iour de septembre mil quatre cēt quatre vings et cinq,"—printed by Guy Marchant, Champ Gaillart, Paris, September 28, 1485. The earliest known wood-engraving is the German one of Saint Christopher, dated 1423,—one year before the execution of the Danse Macabre on the walls of the Innocents. The famous Dance of Death in Bâle was not executed till 1439, and Holbein—to whom it has been attributed—was not born till 1498. The Paris dance is thus much the earlier, and in the reproduction given by Guy Marchant the varying buffoonery of the grotesque figures of death is remarkable,—they laugh, they become astonished, they become enraged,—the "serious contemplation," which they were to inspire, seems far away to our modern eyes, so conventional in their conception only of a conventional horror, silent, menacing, without any shade of humor.

Another image of this mediæval Death has been preserved to our day. This is the small alabaster statue, formerly known as the Mort Saint-Innocent; now preserved in the museum of the École des Beaux-Arts. It stood under the fifth arcade, when issuing from the church, in the charnier of "Messieurs les Martins," and had been executed by their order. It was kept enclosed in a box of which the church wardens had the key, and on All-Saints'-day it was exhibited to the people until noon of the next day. Although attributed to Germain Pilon, it is probably anterior to his time, and is now considered to be the work of a sculptor named François Gentil, a native of Troyes. As shown in the illustration, on page 278, it represents a corpse in the process of dissolution, "a much more striking figure than a skeleton;" it is about a mètre in height, stands upright, with a menacing expression, in its right hand it holds the folds of a shroud or winding-sheet, while the left rests upon the top of a species of shield on which is engraved the following quatrain, which was indicated by a dart placed between the fingers of the left hand:

"Il n'est vivant, tant soit plein d'art,Ni de force pour résistance,Que je ne frappe de mon dard,Pour bailler aux vers leur pitance."

Which may be translated "There is none living, however artful or strong to resist, that I do not strike with my dart, to give to the worms their share." Underneath this somewhat trite observation is a sort of monogram, the upright of which is supported by an M. When the church, the cemetery, and the charniers of the Innocents were all suppressed in 1786, this figure was transferred to the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, afterward to the Musée des Monuments français, by M. Alexandre Lenoir, then to the Louvre, and finally to the Beaux-Arts.

"In the Middle Ages, Death played a very important part; in the arts, the games, and the ornamentation, his image was everywhere. The churches, the cemeteries, and the charniers were covered with epitaphs and with sinister phrases relating to death, and paraphrases of the De profundis and the Dies iræ. At every step, says the author of the Légende des trépassés, the thought of the life eternal presented itself, sombre and terrible;—the melancholy chants and lamentations sobbing under the vaults of the churches hung with black, the hurried tolling of the death-bell which seemed to appeal for help and to sound the tocsin of eternity, the slow and solemn processions of the monks and the penitents intoning in the public squares the seven psalms of penitence, the great dance macabre performed in the cemeteries and the city streets, the representation of the Last Judgment by the brothers of the Passion, … the bell-ringer of the dead making his nocturnal round,—all these formed an ensemble of awe-inspiring scenes well calculated to alienate the living from the frailties of this world."

The use of charniers to receive the bones of the dead, disinterred to make room for more recent corpses in the century-old cemeteries, was peculiar to Paris, and began with the Cimetière des Innocents at an unknown date. The word seems to have first been used in France in the eleventh century;—the historian, Raoul Glaber, quoted in MM. Firmin-Didot's important work on Paris, previously cited, tells us that after a terrible famine, "as it was no longer possible to inter each body separately because of their great number, the pious people who feared God constructed in divers localities charniers, in which were deposited more than five hundred corpses." A dictionary of architecture, published in Paris in 1770, defines the word as meaning a "gallery or portico, formerly constructed around the parish cemeteries, in which the catechism is taught, and in the lofts of which are stored the fleshless bones of the dead. They may be found in several parishes of Paris." Their use was not entirely discontinued till the close of the last century. A pious regard for the relics of the departed led to the search for some honorable place in which to store this constantly increasing multitude of skeletons; sheds or penthouses were used, chapels, the lofts of cloisters and churches. In Paris there were six important churches, the cemeteries of which were surrounded by extensive galleries, lit by rich windows and ornamented with elaborate funerary monuments, and eight other parishes of minor importance; one of the latest built of these, that of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, prided itself on having its steeple and its charnier in miniature. The two most important were that of the Innocents, the popular cemetery, and that of Saint-Paul, the aristocratic one.

To the accidental and isolated places of storage in the former succeeded a series of symmetrical constructions, built independently of each other, yet rapidly succeeding one another, and apparently all by funds proceeding from pious legacies and donations in the fourteenth century. These different galleries enclosed from twenty to twenty-five arcades each, and were largely open to the air, so that their ghastly contents were plainly visible. Some of them, it is thought, had no roofs, or very imperfect ones. Notwithstanding these charnel-houses and the reeking soil of the cemetery itself, a deposit for refuse and offal of every description, this locality was one of the most thronged in the mediæval city. The present Halles Centrales and the Marché des Innocents, which occupied the same site from 1785, are but the legitimate successors of the busy commerce carried on in this locality from the earliest times. Louis XI authorized the construction, in the Rue de la Ferronnerie, against the walls of the charniers, of little stalls or sheds to be let to poor trades-people on condition that they did not display their merchandise on the public street, very narrow in this quarter,—a restriction which was speedily disregarded. "An ordinance of Henri II, on highways, directed that this street should be widened, May 14, 1554; it was not executed, and, fifty-six years later, to the day, Henri IV was assassinated here, May 14, 1610." It may be remembered that the temporary obstruction of the narrow street, which compelled the royal coach to halt, gave Ravaillac his opportunity. In 1669, the charnier des Lingères was ordered to be demolished, and two years later it was reconstructed to form the northern wall of the Rue de la Ferronnerie.