(The Morgue, we should premise, is an establishment in Paris for
the reception of all persons found dead in the City or its environs.
Thither it is the duty of the police to convey the bodies, where they
are exposed in a hall open to the public for a stated time,[1] when,
if not identified, and claimed, they are interred in the neighbouring
cemetery.)
[Footnote 1: The bodies are stripped, and placed on sloping slabs of
marble; above each are hung the clothes of the deceased.]
"After describing the exterior, the _Salle de l'Exposition_, which is
the only portion of the building, of course, with which the public
are acquainted, the writer conducts us into the inner recesses of this
house of death, the apartments of the superintendant.
"M. Perrin, is a little old man, who coughs incessantly. When I
explained to him the object of my visit, he very politely offered to
show me all the details of his administration, regretting much, as he
said, that there was not so much variety as could be desired. 'But I
will show you what I have--be pleased to walk up.'
"As we were climbing the narrow stairs, and he was informing me that
his establishment was connected both with the prefecture and the
police, with the one on account of the local expenses, with the other
from its connexion with the public health, we were obliged to stand
close against the wall to allow a troop of young girls to pass, well
dressed, gay, but shivering with the cold, which blew from the river
through the chink which lighted the stair.
"'These are four of my daughters. I have eight children. François, the
keeper, has had four, and he has had the good fortune to get them all
married. François is a kind father.'
"'So,' said I, 'twelve children then have been born in the Morgue.
Dreams of joy, and conjugal endearments, and parental delights, have
been experienced in this chamber of death. Marriage with its orange
flowers, baptism with its black robed sponsors, the communion, and the
embroidered veil, love, religion, virtue, have had their home here as
elsewhere. God has sown the seeds of happiness every where.'
"'Papa, we are going to a distribution of prizes. My sisters are sure
to get a prize. Don't weary, we will be back in good time.'
"'Go, my children,'--and all four embraced him.
"I thought of the body of the little Norman in the dreary room
beneath, and of the mother who even now, perhaps, was anxiously
looking for her from the window.
"'This is the apartment of François'. François did the honours with
the activity of a man who is not ashamed of his establishment. His
room is comfortably furnished; two modern pendules mounted on
bronze, a wardrobe with a Medusa's head, a high bed, and a handsome
rose-coloured curtain. If the room was not overburdened with
furniture, if there was not much of luxury, yet, to those not early
accustomed to superfluities, it might even seem gay. It represented
the tastes, opinions, and habits of its master. Vases of flowers threw
a green reflection on the curtains, for François is fond of flowers.
Among his gallery of portraits were those of Augereau and Kleber, both
in long coats, leaning on immense sabres, with peruques and powder.
Napoleon is there three times.
"'Look at these jars,' said François, 'these are sweetmeats of
my wife's making; she excels in sweetmeats.' I read upon them,
'gooseberries of 1831.' We left François's apartment which forms the
right wing of the Morgue, while the clerk's house is on the left, and
entered the cabinet of administration of M. Perrin.
"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?'
"'Never!'
"'Not even to the suicides?'
"'There are no suicides for Notre Dame: one is drowned by accident,
another killed by the bursting of a gun, a third has fallen from
a scaffold. I invent the excuse, and the conscience of the priest
accepts it. That's enough.'
"So, thought I! Notre Dame, which formerly witnessed the execution at
the stake of sorcerers, alchymists, and gipsies on the Grande Place,
has now no word of reprobation for the carcass of the suicide, once
allowed to rot on the ground, or be devoured by birds. She asks not
here what was his faith. The priest says mildly, 'Peace be with you.'
"We walked down, and François opened the first room, that which
contains the dresses; habits of all shapes, all dimensions, hideously
jumbled together; gaiters pinned to a sleeve, a shawl shading the neck
of a coat; dresses of peasants, workmen, carters and brewers' frocks,
women's gowns, all faded, discoloured, shapeless, flap against each
other in the current of air which entered through the windows. There
is something here appalling in the sight and sound of these objects,
soulless, body-less, yet moving as if they had life, and presenting
the form without the flesh. Your eye rests on a handkerchief, the
property of some poor labourer, suddenly seized with the idea of
suicide, after some day that he has wanted work.
"François, who followed the direction of my eyes to see what
impression the picture produced on me sighed heavily.
"'Does it move you too,' said I? 'Are you discontented with your
lot.--Unhappy?'
"'Not exactly! But, Sir, formerly, you must know, the dresses, after
being six months exhibited, became a perquisite of ours; we sold them.
Now they talk of taking the dresses from us.'
"I reassured François as to the intention of government, and assured
him there was no talk of taking away the dresses.
"The second room, that which adjoins the public exhibition room, is
appropriated for the dissection of those, the mode of whose death
appears to the police to be suspicious. Its only furniture is a marble
table, on which the dissections take place, and a shelf on which are
placed several bottles of chlorate. This room is immediately above
the room of M. Perrin. The dissecting table above just answers to the
girls' piano below.
"In this room, which I crossed rapidly to avoid as much as possible
the sight of a body extended on the plank, I saw the little girl, who
had been stifled the night before in the diligence; she was a lovely
child. The other figure was frightfully disfigured; scarcely even
would his mother have recognised him.
"There remained only the public room; it is narrow, ill aired; ten or
twelve black and sloping stones receive the suicides, who are placed
on it almost in a state of nudity; the places are seldom all occupied,
except perhaps during a revolution. Then it is that the Morgue is
recruited; two more days of glory and immortality in July, and the
plague had been in Paris.
"'It is true,' said M. Perrin, 'we worked hard during the three days,
and we were allowed the use of two assistants. Corpses every where,
within, without, at the gate, on the bank.'--
"'And your girls?'
"'During these days they did not leave their apartment, nor looked
out to the street, nor to the river; besides, you are mistaken if you
think the spectacle would have terrified them. Brought up here,
they will walk at night without a light in front of the glass, which
divides the corpses from the public, without trembling; we become
accustomed to any thing.'
"Methought I heard the poor children, so familiar with the idea of
death, so accustomed to this domestic spectacle of their existence,
asking innocently of the strangers whom they visited,--as one would
ask where is your garden, your kitchen, or your cabinet,--'where do
_you_ keep your dead here?'
"These were all the facts I could gather with regard to the
establishment. I was opening the glass door to breathe the fresh air
again, when the entrance of the crowd drove me back into the interior;
they were following a bier, on which lay a body, from which the water
dripped in a long stream. From one of the hands which were closely
clenched, the keeper detached a strip of coloured linen, and a
fragment of lace. 'Ah!' said he, 'let me look, 'tis she!'
"'Who is it?'
"'The nurse who was here this morning; the nurse of the little Norman
girl. Good! they may be buried together.' And M. Perrin put on
his spectacles, opened his register, and wrote in his best
current-hand--_unknown!_"
* * * * *