LUNATIC ASYLUMS AND MIXED INSTITUTIONS.
The Treatment of Lunacy in the Past--La Salpêtrière--Bicêtre--The Story
of Latude--The Four Sergeants of La Rochelle--Pinel’s
Reforms--Charenton.
Our description of the hospitals and asylums of Paris would be scarcely
complete without some mention of the public madhouses. In
pre-revolutionary Paris no special establishment for the treatment of
the insane existed. Strange as it may seem, there were no lunatic
asylums in France until the beginning of this century; nor until 1838
was any such institution formally recognised by law. We have not far to
go back to find the demented treated as criminals, or exorcised as
demoniacs, or put to death as magicians and sorcerers. Mr. H. C.
Burdett, who has recently published a work on the hospitals and asylums
of the world, divides the history of lunatics and their treatment into
four periods.
I. An early period when, at the beginning of the Christian era, the
insane were brought together and placed under intelligent control.--In
this connection Mr. Burdett cites the rules given for the treatment of
lunatics by Aretæus (A.D. 80) and Soranus (A.D. 95). The latter, in
particular, gave directions of great minuteness as to the temperature
and furniture of the rooms, the arrangements of the bed, the physical
and mental exercises to which the patients afflicted with dementia were
to be subjected. The superintendents, according to the rules of this
period, were to have strict instructions to repress the errors of the
patients in such a way as not to exasperate them by too much sharpness,
and yet not permit them, by too much weakness, to increase their
unreasonable demands. Subsequent writers deal with insanity in a like
spirit of enlightenment down to Paulus Ægineta (A.D. 650).
II. The period of slaughter.--In the Middle Ages the treatment of
lunatics was worthy only of the ages characterised as dark. A madman was
worse treated than a mad dog. For twelve centuries lunatics were
commonly put to death, and in most cases by burning at the stake. In
France alone twenty thousand are said to have been burnt in a hundred
years; and the same thing went on in every other country. Those who were
not burnt wandered at large in a wretched condition, to die at last from
exposure; or they were confined in dungeons, starved and cruelly
maltreated. Ambrose Paré, the celebrated French surgeon, medical
attendant of Francis I., fully believed that lunatics were possessed by
the devil. “They may often be seen,” he says, “to change into goats,
asses, dogs, wolves, crows, and frogs; they cause thunder and lightning,
lift castles into the air, and fascinate the eye.” King Louis XIV. has
been much reproached since his death as he was adulated during his
lifetime. To him, in any case, is due the first movement against the
cruel--the absolutely insane treatment of the insane. In 1670 a trial
took place in Normandy which ended in the condemnation of seventeen
people to the stake, either as lunatics or as sorcerers. A rat, it was
sworn, had been seen talking to a child; and on the strength of this
evidence everyone who could be brought into connection with the strange
incident was sentenced to death. The king was indignant, and soon
afterwards a decree was published forbidding trials of the kind in
future.
III. The period of torture.--Though no longer subject to death
punishment by fire, lunatics were almost as badly off in the eighteenth
and at the beginning of the nineteenth century as at an earlier time.
Such asylums as existed in France and other countries up to the present
century were entirely of a monastic kind; and it was not, as before
mentioned, until the reign of Louis Philippe that any regular secular
institution for the treatment of the insane was founded. The unhappy
lunatics were probably happiest in those countries where least notice
was taken of them; for not a century ago they were liable, when “cared
for,” to copious bleeding, shower-baths, sudden frights, and rigid
coercion. In some places they were chained and flogged at the changes of
the moon, or they were placed under the charge of criminals, who set
dogs on them and tortured them to death. The doctors, instead of
checking these barbarities, encouraged them; and from time to time
invented new ones. They it was who introduced the “circular swing” and
“bath of surprise.” One torture, diabolically devised, was to lower the
patient into a well, chain him there, and allow the water to rise
gradually to his mouth in order to give a shock to his nerves. An
unhappy man named Norris was in England, at the so-called Hospital of
Bethlem, fixed to the wall by the neck and waist so that he could not
move a foot or raise his arms; and, thus attached, he remained for
twelve years.
“At an epoch not far distant from our own,” says Dr. Linas in a paper on
lunatic asylums in France, “demented persons were, with the exception of
those who found an asylum in the monasteries, treated as vagabonds and
even criminals.”
The first attempts to improve the condition of the unhappy lunatic were
made by Dr. Tenon, and by a member of the Constituent Assembly, M.
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, in 1791. A year later Pinel, equally estimable
for his philanthropic and for his scientific spirit, introduced at
Bicêtre the reforms which, in common with the two excellent men before
named, he had long been meditating. For the First Revolution, then, with
all its mad excesses, must be claimed the honour of having introduced in
modern times the humane treatment of the insane. The Revolution, indeed,
opened not only a “career to talent,” but a path to very useful reform.
The mad patients were now taken from the Hôtel Dieu and other hospitals
to be placed at Charenton, Bicêtre, and La Salpêtrière (1802-1807). From
that time these asylums, placed under the direction of eminent medical
men, changed their character. The employment of force or coercion with
lunacy was at an end; and the new establishments, thanks to the
intelligence and zeal of Esquirol, Ferrus, and their disciples, gained
the highest reputation throughout Europe. The study of mental maladies
was now for the first time followed.
[Illustration: FAÇADE OF THE MAIN BUILDINGS, SALPÊTRIÈRE.]
It was not, however, until 1838 that Charenton became a lunatic asylum
and nothing else. Bicêtre and La Salpêtrière remained hybrid
institutions, half hospitals, half asylums; receptacles alike for
madness and old age. The inmates of Charenton are treated with the
greatest kindness. Cases of insubordination must of course be dealt
with; and they are treated by the withdrawal of some favour or (less
humanely, as it would seem to the lay reader) by the shower-bath. A
strait-jacket, with long sewn-up sleeves, is the only means of coercion
employed with violent and dangerous madmen, so as to preserve them
against the excesses of their own fury and to render it impossible for
them to injure their companions. The wards of the unruly patients--broad
and lofty, well lighted, well ventilated, with waxed floors--present no
resemblance whatever to the cages of former days.
All patients without exception, peaceful or unruly, are in the enjoyment
of fresh air, sunlight, space, and as much liberty as can be prudently
allowed them. They correspond with their relatives and receive visits
from their family and their friends. Once a month they are officially
visited by a magistrate, whose duty it is to question them and listen to
their complaints. For the men there are workshops of all kinds, for the
women workrooms. The dormitories are well kept, the dining rooms are
exquisitely clean, and for the recreation of the patients there are
billiard rooms, drawing rooms, and libraries. Music, too, and drawing
may be cultivated. During the summer there are excursions to the
country, during the winter evening parties, concerts, and dramatic
representations. Among the inmates persons of every age, every rank, and
every profession are to be found: some of them monomaniacs, harmless
dreamers after an impossible chimera or vain hope; or it may be
obstinately attached to some wild idea which they cannot refer to
without expressions of violence. The liberal professions are largely
represented at Charenton, and, due numerical proportion being observed,
furnish more lunatics than any other class. “Paris,” says Dr. Linas,
“the great rendezvous of every kind of ambition, every kind of vanity,
every presumption, every passion, every pleasure, and every form of
misery, furnishes a larger contingent than any other part of France.”
While the proportion of lunatics for the other departments is one to
from 1,500 to 2,000 inhabitants, it is in the ratio of one to 500 for
the department of the Seine. In 1801 this department had 946 lunatics to
support, in 1845 2,595, in 1851 3,060, and in 1865 4,388. Happily,
however, largely as the numbers will be seen to have swelled, a great
many cures are yearly effected. In the year last-named 389 patients (154
men and 224 women) were discharged sane from Bicêtre and the
Salpêtrière.
There are two modes of admission to these asylums. The Prefect of the
Seine authorises the admission of harmless patients on the demand of
those patients’ friends; but lunatics who are considered dangerous to
the community--and these form by far the greater proportion--are shut up
by order of the Prefect of Police.
Let us take a leisurely glance at the two great French lunatic asylums.
To begin with La Salpêtrière. It is situated on the 13th arrondissement,
almost at the entrance to the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, and not far from
the Jardin des Plantes and the Bridge of Austerlitz. On the pediment of
its portal is this inscription: “Hospital for old age--Women.” Such has
been the official title of the institution since 1823, but the more
ancient and popular name, that of La Salpêtrière, has prevailed in
common use.
[Illustration: THE MAZARIN WARD, SALPÊTRIÈRE.]
At the spot which is occupied by this madhouse there stood in the reign
of Louis XIII. a little arsenal called La Salpêtrière, on account of the
saltpetre which was made within its walls. In 1656 appeared an edict of
Louis XIV. ordering the establishment at this point of a general
hospital for the “poor mendicants of the town and suburbs of Paris.”
Thanks to the royal munificence, to the liberality and generous
co-operation of Cardinal Mazarin, of the Duchess d’Aiguillon, and
several notable citizens, to the pious zeal of Vincent de Paul, and to
the active direction of the architects Levau, Bruant, Duval, and Le
Muet, the various buildings of the arsenal were happily converted into a
retreat for the poor, two new blocks, those of Mazarin and St. Claire,
being added to the original structures. From the 7th to the 13th of May,
1657, the hospital opened its doors to 628 poor women, blind, mad, and
imbecile, infirm, invalid, deaf, or otherwise afflicted, as well as to
192 children of from two to seven years of age, who, born in many cases
out of wedlock, had been exposed and abandoned.
In 1669 the church was built by the king’s orders. Towards 1684 was
constructed in the centre of the hospital the prison of La Force, where
women of irregular life were incarcerated. In 1756 the Marchioness de
Lassay caused to be constructed at her own expense the superb building
which bears her name, and which forms a pendant to that of Mazarin.
At the period last mentioned La Salpêtrière still contained, as at its
origin, the most strangely mixed population that could be conceived. At
the end of the last century, and more particularly at the beginning of
the present, efforts were made to transform this “frightful sewer,” as
Camus called it. From 1801 to 1804 La Force was evacuated. Its feminine
inhabitants transferred to Lourcine, the children went to the Orphelins;
the insane were separated from the infirm and placed in a special
quarter. From 1815 to 1823, in virtue of a very strong report drawn up
by M. de Pastoret, the dungeons of La Salpêtrière were destroyed, the
sanitation improved, the dormitories enlarged and well ventilated, the
furniture renewed, and the diet improved. Finally, as if to efface all
memory of the past, the asylum received the name of Hospital for Old
Age. Other subsequent ameliorations, notably those effected in 1836,
1845, 1848, and 1851, have contributed to render La Salpêtrière what it
certainly is in the present day--the finest institution of the kind in
France.
The total population of the establishment is no less than 5,000,
comprising as it does some 800 employés, 1,500 lunatics, and nearly
3,600 patients, old or infirm. The annual expenses amount to nearly two
million francs. Within the precincts of La Salpêtrière the visitor might
fancy himself in a small town. There is a church, a letter box, a
tobacco shop, a butcher’s shop, warehouses, wash-houses, and a market,
or rather bazaar, where all sorts of goods are retailed, such as fruit,
vegetables, sweetmeats, and pastry; there are streets named after the
establishments to which they lead--Laundry Street, Kitchen Street,
Church Street, and so on; there are large promenades and pretty gardens,
together with courts, squares, and “places” bearing the illustrious name
of a founder, a benefactress, a physician, or a saint immortalised by
charity.
This vast community of indigence and madness is under the control of the
general administration of Public Assistance. The local management is in
the hands of a director, assisted by a steward and eleven clerks. The
medical officers are seven in number, five for the insane and two for
the infirm; not to mention a surgeon, a dispensing chemist, and other
medical assistants. The religious services are conducted according both
to the Catholic and the Protestant ritual. The staff of female
attendants is divided up into superintendents, under-superintendents,
household servants, etc. The superintendents and under-superintendents
wear a black uniform, severe but in good taste. They are women carefully
chosen, able, devoted, of tried zeal, benevolent character, and not
infrequently of mental culture.
Before the principal entrance to La Salpêtrière, looking towards the
Boulevard de l’Hôpital, is a more or less triangular open space, which,
almost deserted during five days of the week, is animated and noisy like
a fair every Thursday and Sunday between the hours of twelve and four;
for the public is then admitted to see the inmates, and the wandering
dealers have assembled in order to sell presents for the unfortunate
patients. The two porters of the establishment have on these days enough
to do, since the number of visitors averages from 1,200 to 3,000.
Before entering the hospital the church is worthy of observation. Louis
XIV. ordered it to be built in December, 1669, and it was constructed by
the celebrated architect, Levau. It is of octagonal form, and like the
ancient basilicas, of which the model is preserved by the Greek Church
in Russia and elsewhere, it is surmounted by five cupolas: a central
one, beneath which stands the high altar, and four lateral ones covering
an equal number of chapels.
Under the portico are two allegorical groups by the famous sculptor,
Etex. The interior of the church is adorned with ancient organs, statues
of Christ and of the twelve apostles, and a number of pictures belonging
to the eighteenth century, some of which should not hastily be passed
by. Every Sunday nearly three hundred demented women assist with the
greatest devotion at the celebration of mass. On the buildings and wings
to the right and left of the church are engraved the names of the most
illustrious and most generous benefactors of the Salpêtrière: Mazarin,
Bellièvre, Fouquet, and Lassay.
Administratively and medically the Salpêtrière is divided into five
compartments, which are subdivided into quarters or sections. The old
people, the incurables, the infirm, form three separate classes. The
principal wards bear the names of Mazarin, Lassay, St. Jacques, St.
Léon, and Ste. Claire. There are smaller wards which are dedicated to
the Virgin, to St. Vincent de Paul, the guardian angel, and St.
Magdalen.
The patients are allowed three meals a day: between seven and eight a
breakfast of bread and milk; between eleven and twelve, soup and boiled
beef; between four and five, a plate of vegetables and then dessert.
Those who are well enough, to the number of 850, take their meals in the
refectory; the others, upwards of 1,700, are served in the dormitories.
The annual mortality among the indigent inmates averages 23 per cent. At
the time Dr. Linas wrote his paper on La Salpêtrière there were several
examples of longevity in the institution, including a certain Madame
Mercier, who was well and lively at 104.
The department which occupies the southern extremity of La Salpêtrière
is the one specially devoted to lunatics. Placed at the head of the
establishment in 1795, Pinel introduced at this hospital the same
beneficent reforms with which he had already endowed Bicêtre. He at once
did away with the chains, fetters, and irons with which, until his time,
the patients were loaded, and he filled up the subterranean dungeons in
which unhappy women, half naked, had often had their feet gnawed by
rats, or frozen by the cold of winter. From 1818 to 1836 Esquirol,
pupil, disciple, and friend of Pinel, introduced new modifications to
soften the lot of the deranged.
Connected with La Salpêtrière are many interesting traditions. During
its earliest days St. Vincent de Paul ministered constantly to the
patients. Here Bossuet, on the 29th of June, 1657, pronounced his
panegyric on St. Paul, one of the masterpieces of Christian eloquence.
Here was confined in 1788 the mysterious personage calling herself
Madame de Donhault, whose identity has never been established, and who
is known in judicial annals as the “WOMAN WITHOUT A NAME,” or “THE SHAM
MARCHIONESS.” Here, too, was shut up the widow and accomplice of the
famous poisoner, Desrues, massacred with thirty-five other prisoners on
the 4th of September, 1792. Two other women who played in the world two
very different parts died at La Salpêtrière: Théroigne de Méricourt, at
the age of fifty-seven, after eighteen years of wild illusions, and
Mdlle. Quino.
The Salpêtrière has been the cradle of important physical and
psychological studies in connection with brain diseases. These have
sometimes taken a slightly fantastic form, as when Esquirol and his
nephew, Dr. Miture, endeavoured to cure madness by the most agreeable
remedies--the former prescribing music, the latter champagne. Rostan and
Georget in 1822 made at La Salpêtrière experiments in animal magnetism,
which attracted much attention in the scientific world, especially as
regards two subjects, now well known in the history of somnabulism: the
young Petronilla, and the widow Brouillard, nicknamed Braquette, whose
clairvoyance was some years later put to a delicate test by three
mischievous house surgeons, MM. Dechambre, Diday, and Debrou. A number
of interesting and very important experiments in the new science (or old
science under a new name) of hypnotism have been made by Charcot and his
pupils at this institution. Here, too, a close examination and analysis
of the cerebral manifestations of the insane led some subtle anatomist
to the conclusion that genius was but a form of insanity. There was one
physician of La Salpêtrière, M. Lélut, member of the Chamber of
Deputies, and of the Institute, who, in two remarkable works,
endeavoured to prove that in the minds of Socrates and of Pascal there
was, at least, a touch of madness. Another learned physician, attached
during the Louis Philippe period to the Salpêtrière, M.
Trélat--described by Dr. Linas as “an excellent man, ex-minister, and
_not_ a member of the Legion of Honour”--wrote a book, which may be
classed with the one just named, on “Lucid Madness.”
Bicêtre, an asylum of the same character as La Salpêtrière, derives its
name from the familiar Winchester. On the site of Bicêtre, in the year
of grace 1284, Jean de Pontoise, Bishop of Winchester, built near Paris
a manor house, which, after the name of his see, he called Winchester,
soon corrupted into Wicester, which, by a further process of corruption,
became successively Bicestre and Bicêtre. After going through various
hands, and at last passing into the king’s possession, Bicêtre was given
in 1656 by Louis XIV. to be turned into a hospital for old men above the
age of seventy, lame and incurable children, the blind, the paralytic,
the imbecile, and the epileptic, together with women of dissolute life,
who were to be received only on condition of being corrected, whipped,
and fed on bread and water.
At the period of the Revolution Bicêtre was at once a hospital, an
asylum, a prison, and a house of correction, until, in 1791, it became
at the same time a madhouse. The lunatics were at first mixed up with
the criminals, or confined in horrible dungeons, but at length the
intelligent and benevolent Pinel broke their chains. It was only in
1812, however, that the lunatics were placed in a special compartment,
separate at once from the criminals and from the patients. Bicêtre
continued to be a prison until 1836, when it became simply a hospital.
At present the dungeons of former days are used as store-rooms for
provisions and drugs.
[Illustration: PLACE DE CONSEIL, SALPÊTRIÈRE.]
Bicêtre is a little beyond the fortifications on the road to
Fontainebleau. An avenue, lined with eating houses and taverns, so
plentiful at all the Barriers, leads to the principal entrance, which is
surmounted by a royal escutcheon with this inscription, “Hospice de la
Vieillesse--Hommes.” It is inhabited by some 3,000 persons, comprising
more than four hundred officials and servants, upwards of 1,500 indigent
persons, between fifty and sixty convalescents, 1,830 adult lunatics,
and 120 epileptic and idiotic children. The annual cost of the
establishment amounts to one million and a half francs.
Bicêtre, like the Salpêtrière, is divided into departments: the Hospice
on the north, where the aged and infirm of the city of Paris are
gratuitously received; and the Asile, on the south, intended for the
lunatics of the Department of the Seine. Like the Salpêtrière, it has
more the character of a town than of a single building. Without any
pretension to architecture, Bicêtre is composed of wings, outgrowths,
and “annexes” of various kinds, added and super-added to the original
and central structure. The shops attached to the establishment are now
limited to a grocer’s and a tobacconist’s. There was formerly a shop for
the sale of alcoholic drinks; but the intemperance of the customers
caused the administration to banish for ever its estimable proprietor.
For similar reasons the strictest regulations have been affixed to the
door of the still-existing canteen.
The canteen occupies the superb cellar of the ancient manor house: an
immense crypt, admirably constructed and supported by a double rank of
robust pilasters. It was formerly the Eldorado of the inhabitants of
Bicêtre. Officials, servants, visitors, were in the canteen from morning
till night, giving themselves up to libations of Rabelaisian magnitude;
so much so that this, pauper-tavern brought in, one year with another, a
clear profit of 50,000 francs. To put a stop to these abuses, both in
the interest of morality and of health, the administration of La
Salpêtrière, instead of letting out the canteen to enterprising
speculators, assumed the entire direction of it, and introduced
stringent regulations, by which the canteen is only open for two hours
in the morning and two hours in the evening. No one, moreover, must
enter it more than once in twenty-four hours, when the order must be
limited to thirty centilitres (about 1/3 of a quart) of wine, or five
centilitres of brandy. Complaints, threats, and even partial revolt were
the consequences of this severe edict; but it had to be observed.
For the rest, the inhabitants of Bicêtre, if they are really thirsty,
have excellent water within reach. The great well, said to be the finest
in the world, is one of the curiosities of the place. The depth of the
well is equal to the height of the towers of Notre Dame. Its walls are
faced with masonry to a depth of some 150 feet, and the bottom is
reached by a staircase of 220 steps. The mouth is enclosed by an immense
cage, intended to preserve the beholder from the vertiginous attractions
of its depth. The three pumps connected with the well used formerly to
be worked day and night by prisoners, and, when they were tired out, by
lunatics. For the last thirty years, however, the pumping has been done
by a steam engine. The water is discharged into an immense reservoir,
which received the major part of its contents from the well, and the
remainder from the Seine.
[Illustration: THE PARK, SALPÊTRIÈRE.]
Close to the great well are the workshops, where, among other products,
some seven thousand pairs of boots and shoes are turned out every year.
All the able-bodied inmates must do work of some kind, for which they
are remunerated at the rate of from ten to seventy centimes a day.
The library, founded in 1860, contains 2,500 volumes, and is open twice
a day.
The inmates of Bicêtre come from all classes: workmen, soldiers,
servants, artists, writers, professors, inventors, shopkeepers,
government clerks--whom imprudence, misconduct, or misfortune has
reduced to poverty. This mixed population is said to be difficult to
rule, and in former days it frequently showed insubordination, and even
rose in insurrection against the officials of the place. The rising of
1837 was caused by the limitations in connection with drink, already
mentioned; that of 1841 by the suppression of the right to dine alone;
that of 1848 by the abolition of liberty to go out every day at any hour
without permission. To prevent the return of any such disturbances an
administrative order was issued in 1850, instituting the following
penalties against particular offences: stoppage of wine, withdrawal of
leave to go out, imprisonment and expulsion from the asylum. It may be
seen from the above that it is not alone in the mad division of the
hospital that lunatics are to be found.
The lunatic department at Bicêtre is divided into three sections; the
first and second being assigned to adult lunatics, the third to
epileptics and idiots. The study in which peaceable lunatics assemble to
read, write, or draw is interesting, if only for the objects of art
which adorn it: busts, statues, water-colours, engravings, sepias, and
pen-and-ink drawings, some by unknown artists, others by artists of
celebrity--many of them inmates, for a while, at least, of the asylum.
In the time of Dr. Linas (some twenty years ago) there was a painter in
the lunatic wards of Bicêtre, a former priest, known in the house as
“Monsieur L’Abbé,” who, if he had not gone mad, would, in the opinion of
Dr. Linas, have earned renown. “Nothing,” says the doctor, “is more
curious than his symbolical picture of ‘Life’: a vast composition, in
which are represented, with wonderful harmony of ensemble, and a
prodigious fecundity of detail, all the splendour and all the misery,
all the heights and all the depths, all the virtues and all the vices,
all the grandeurs and all the infamies, all the beauty and all the
turpitude, of human existence from the cradle to the grave.”
The ward for epileptic and idiotic children is the saddest of all, by
its arrangement and general exterior, as well as by the condition of the
patients. These are well cared for. Unhappy creatures, who were formerly
regarded as the dregs of humanity, are now made the object of the most
devoted solicitude. Two physicians, of heart as well as of talent, were
the first to show that idiocy has its degrees, and is not absolutely
refractory to intellectual culture. At their suggestion a school for
idiots was instituted at Bicêtre in 1842, and since then untiring
endeavour has been made to further their education. They are taught to
speak, to read, to sing. Their irregular attitudes and gestures are
corrected, and their muscular system is developed by marching, running,
dancing, fencing, digging, and gymnastics of every kind. Their senses
are directed, their bad instincts reformed, and in time, according to
their aptitude, they are made cobblers, carpenters, and so on. Many
children admitted as idiots leave the asylum every year to exercise
these trades, and live by their work.
Criminal lunatics, condemned by a verdict, or dangerous ones, certified
as such, are kept apart in a building called La Sureté. Within this
sinister rotunda the patients are kept in cells, and subjected night and
day to the strictest surveillance. The ordinary occupation of these
dangerous lunatics is the harmless one of cutting out artificial
flowers. Their occasional fits of violence are dealt with only by the
application of the strait-jacket.
Many of the officials at Bicêtre look upon the place not only as a home,
but as a native land. Born at Bicêtre of parents who were preceded at
the same institution by their own parents, the functionaries form a sort
of official dynasty. Bicêtre has had its celebrities, its dramas, its
memorable events. In legendary times the hill-side of Gentilly was
haunted by Wehr-wolves, and the wizards of the neighbourhood held
sabbath there. Interesting anecdotes have been told about the captivity
of Salomon de Caux in the dungeons of Bicêtre, and the visit of Marion
Delorme to the inventor, supposed by many of his countrymen to have
constructed the first steam engine. At the time, however, of Salomon de
Caux (1580-1630) Bicêtre was a magnificent country house, and neither a
prison nor an asylum. It is certain, on the other hand, that this
establishment has reckoned among its prisoners or its patients Latude,
the unhappy victim of the hatred of Mme. de Pompadour, who, after
escaping three times from Vincennes and the Bastille, was three times
re-arrested, and finally delivered, after thirty-five years of
captivity, by the courageous perseverance of Mme. Legros.
The pathetic story of Latude might be told in connection with more than
one of the Paris prisons, mixed establishments, and lunatic asylums; for
he was confined successively in the Bastille, the Castle of Vincennes,
at Charenton, and, finally, at Bicêtre. With a genius for escaping from
imprisonment, and an equal aptitude for getting recaptured, this able,
energetic, yet light-minded, and, in sum, most unhappy man, provoked his
first incarceration by a too ingenious device which he adopted with the
view of securing the favour of Mme. de Pompadour, the all-powerful
favourite of Louis XV. He was a lieutenant in the army when the idea
occurred to him of obtaining promotion by putting himself forward as
saviour of Mme. de Pompadour’s life. Sending her a collection of
explosive toys, combined so as to form a sham infernal machine, he at
the same time warned her not to open any parcel that might be addressed
to her, since it had come to his knowledge that a case was being
forwarded, which, on removal of the lid, would violently explode. “The
gentleman knows too much,” thought Mme. de Pompadour; and she
communicated her reflection to the Lieutenant of Police, who, sending
for Latude, questioned him, and after convicting him out of his own
mouth of the imposition he had practised, sent him to the Bastille.
Transferred a few months later to the Castle of Vincennes, he succeeded
on the 25th of June, 1750, in making his escape, and in this very
original manner. Watching until he found one of the prison gates open,
he ran out and, breathless as he was, asked every sentinel he passed
whether he had seen the Abbé de Saint Sauveur, whose ministrations were
needed for a dying prisoner. Taking him for one of the officials of the
establishment, the sentinels allowed him to hurry on--allowed him, that
is to say, to make his escape. Latude was unable to profit by his
liberty. Convinced that Mme. de Pompadour would pardon him his
thoughtless act, he wrote her a letter of regret and appeal, related to
her his escape, and confided to her his place of concealment. But the
selfish marchioness could not forget that he had caused her a moment’s
fright. She sent his letter to the Lieutenant of Police, and the poor
man was once more thrown into the Bastille, with orders that he was to
be strictly watched. One day, however, the governor took pity on him,
and to render his captivity less rigorous gave him a companion. This
companion was another young man who, strangely enough, had himself given
offence to the all-powerful marchioness by an epigram of which he had
been proved to be the author. His name was D’Aligre; and the two
prisoners, both indebted for their captivity to the same tyrannical
woman, made common cause and became fast friends. Their first thought
was naturally to escape from the Bastille; and the project having once
been formed, it was easier for two persons to carry it out than for only
one. The preparations for their escape occupied them not less than two
years. From time to time they cut off faggots from the blocks of wood
furnished to them as fuel, and at the same time tore strips from their
shirts and their bed-linen. The linen was tied and twisted into a
knotted rope, more than a hundred yards long. With the wood they made a
ladder to aid them, when they had descended into the moat, in getting up
the parapet on the other side. All the preparations having been
finished, the two prisoners chose for their escape a dark wintry night,
when there was but little chance of their movements being observed. They
began by climbing the chimney, one after the other. Then having fastened
the rope, they one after the other slid down, till, excited, exhausted,
and with bleeding hands, they reached the moat in safety. The wooden
ladder enabled them, as their next step, to get over the parapet, which
brought them into the governor’s garden. The wall which surrounded it
was too high to climb, and they had no second ladder with which to
escalade it. Fortunately, in view of some difficulty of this kind, they
had provided themselves with a strong wooden stick, and this they made
use of for picking out the mortar, loosening the bricks, and ultimately
making a hole sufficiently large for them to crawl through. During this
laborious and dangerous work, when the very noise they were making might
at any moment cause their discovery, day broke, and they had just time
to force themselves through the aperture they had made, when there were
already signs of movement within the fortress. Latude and his companion
had just taken refuge in one of the narrow streets surrounding the
Bastille when the alarm-bell sounded. Their flight had been discovered.
D’Aligre, disguised as a peasant, had no difficulty in passing the
frontier. He was arrested at Brussels. Latude, informed of the capture
of his friend, changed his route, but was equally unfortunate. Just when
he was on the point of taking ship for India the police seized him at
Amsterdam. He was brought back to the Bastille.
This time he was cast into a dungeon which looked out on to the moat,
whose fetid vapours had a very injurious effect upon his health. To
occupy his time and divert his thoughts, the unhappy prisoner undertook
the taming of rats, and having from the branch of a bulrush made a
primitive flute or flageolet, he played tunes upon it, an attention to
which the little animals are said to have been by no means insensible.
With marvellous patience and ingenuity, Latude now made tablets with the
crumb of his bread, and wrote upon them with his blood. He had conceived
certain plans of financial reform and of much-needed amelioration in
various departments of state, and these he noted down as best he could
by the difficult and painful means just mentioned. Finding how he was
occupied, the governor was seized with compassion, and in his sympathy
supplied the patient, intelligent prisoner with pen, ink, and paper.
Latude now wrote day and night on all kinds of political and financial
subjects. His suggestions were transmitted to the different ministers,
less in the hope that they would be adopted than that their exposure
would draw attention to the writer’s wretched state. One day Latude
succeeded in getting a letter into the hands of Madame de Pompadour. It
was in these words:--“On the 25th of this month of September, 1760, I
shall have had 100,000 hours of suffering.” He thought for a moment that
this pathetic utterance might restore him to liberty. But he had still
200,000 hours to count.
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE, SALPÊTRIÈRE.]
Permission was now given to him to walk on the terrace of the tower. He
succeeded in awakening the interest of two young laundresses whose
garret-windows looked out upon the walls of the Bastille; and one fine
day in April, 1764, these girls, by means of large letters traced on a
strip of paper, informed him that the woman who had persecuted him was
dead. In his usual impulsive way, Latude now wrote to the Lieutenant of
Police, telling him that he had heard of Mme. de Pompadour’s death, and
that he trusted there was now some chance, after such prolonged
tortures, of his being set at liberty. By way of reply, the lieutenant
wished to know how he (Latude), of all the prisoners, was the only one
that the news had reached. Determined not to compromise his kind-hearted
informants, Latude refused to explain, upon which the lieutenant ordered
that he should be watched more closely than ever. He was now put back in
the dungeon, but soon afterwards, without any reason being assigned, was
transferred to Vincennes. There a certain liberty was allowed him. Among
other privileges he was permitted to walk in the garden, by which he
soon profited to make his escape. The young laundress gave him asylum,
and he now, with his unvarying imprudence, wrote to the Lieutenant of
Police to request an audience. M. de Sartines took no notice of the
application, except to have his correspondent arrested and taken back to
Vincennes.
Latude now passed ten continuous years in prison. He had long been
utterly forgotten when the minister Malesherbes, making a scrupulous
inspection of the state prisons, saw him, heard the tale of his woes,
and promised to do him justice. Circumvented, however, by the Lieutenant
of Police, who represented Latude as a dangerous lunatic, he, with the
best intentions, ordered the poor wretch to be removed to Charenton.
This was still further to aggravate the captive’s condition, for
Charenton was by several degrees worse than Vincennes. Madmen were then
treated in the cruellest fashion, confined in narrow cells, and fed on a
disgusting diet. Allowed a little more freedom than the other inmates,
he was shocked to find, in a fetid little dungeon, loaded with chains
and mercilessly beaten by the warders, his old companion D’Aligre, whose
reason had not been able to survive his misfortunes, who scarcely
recognised his friend, and who died shortly afterwards.
The adventures of Latude, however, had now attracted the attention of
the outside world. He had been able so far to elude the vigilance of the
warders as to get a few letters delivered to influential personages. An
order for his liberation, almost immediately revoked, was signed in
1777. The victim had hardly started out for Montagnac, his native place,
when he was re-arrested--though here again he probably had his own folly
to thank, for he might have got clean away had he not obstinately
determined to make a stay at Paris, and delayed his departure with that
object. This time he was shut up at Bicêtre with malefactors of the
worst class.
The history of Latude is singularly touching when one reflects that it
was for a mere piece of boyish stupidity that he suffered a weight of
frightful misery, which grew not lighter but heavier as years dragged
on. “Each year,” says Michelet, “his sad position was aggravated. At
length the crevices of his windows were stopped up and additional bars
fitted to his cell. In Latude,” continues this historian, “the imbecile
old tyranny had incarcerated the very man who could best denounce it--an
ardent and terrible man whom nothing could tame, whose voice shook the
walls, and whose wit and audacity were invincible.... His body was made
of indestructible iron; for he could live in the Bastille, at Vincennes,
at Charenton, and even at the horrible Bicêtre, where anyone else would
have perished.
[Illustration: THE LUNATICS’ QUARTER, SALPÊTRIÈRE.]
“I am unfortunately obliged to say that in this effeminate and decayed
society there were not wanting philanthropists, ministers, magistrates,
and grand-seigneurs to weep over the affair; but none of them did
anything. Malesherbes wept, and Lamoignon and Rohan: everyone wept hot
tears.
“He was on his muck-heap at Bicêtre, literally eaten up with vermin,
lodged underground, and often howling with hunger. He had again
addressed a memoir to some philanthropist, entrusting it to a turnkey: a
woman picked it up.
“This woman was a little milliner, Mme. Legros, whose name is now
unalienably associated with that of Latude. A high official had come to
visit Bicêtre by royal order. He heard the victim’s complaints, which
moved his pity, and requested Latude to draw up a statement of his
grievances. The document was promptly prepared, but a drunken messenger
failed to deliver it, and it was picked up by the young woman in
question, who, having read it with deep compassion, saw what others
could not see, that Latude was no madman, but a victim of the frightful
necessities of a government obliged to put out of the way a man who
could expose its vices. That was the obstacle which had frustrated the
benevolent desires of Malesherbes, Lemoignon, and Rohan. Latude was to
remain in captivity simply because he had already been in captivity too
long.”
Mme. Legros, however, courageously undertook the work of justice, and
nobly persevered with it in spite of all. During three years she
solicited everybody, notwithstanding the misery in which she was herself
living--for the police tried to intimidate her, and threatened her with
transportation or imprisonment. She persisted all the same; and having
lost her little business, she sacrificed her last resources to the cause
which she had made her own. By dint of interviewing the valets of
ministers and the femmes-de-chambre of ladies of high rank, she at
length managed to interest Marie Antoinette herself in the fate of
Latude. Louis XVI. promised to look into the matter, and had the police
documents brought to him--papers, that is to say, prepared by those who
only desired that the prisoner might die on their hands. The decision,
therefore, of the monarch was that Latude, as a very dangerous man, must
never be released. Even this did not discourage Mme. Legros, who,
indeed, had public opinion on her side. The popular wave was already
mounting high; it submerged the inflexible Sartines, and, after him,
Lenoir. The Academy gave it a further impulse by awarding to Mme.
Legros, in 1783, the prize of virtue as recompense for her heroic
perseverance in the cause she had espoused. All that the minister
Breteuil could obtain from this independent body was that the grounds on
which the prize was awarded should not be proclaimed. The blow directed
against the police and the court was a heavy one, and early the next
year Latude was finally set free. He was then on the verge of his
sixtieth year; he had passed thirty-five years in prison. As sole
indemnity after so much suffering, he was granted a pension of 400
francs “in consideration of his lost patrimony,” as the official order
phrased it; and even this was conditional upon his quitting Paris to
live in his native province. Mme. Legros, by dint of tact and of
petitions, got this sentence of exile revoked, and Latude came to live
in her house at Paris. When the Revolution broke out he ardently
embraced its principles, and in 1793, attacking the heirs of Mme. de
Pompadour, he obtained against them from the Commune a condemnation to
pay him an indemnity of 60,000 francs, though he never touched more than
a sixth of this sum. A public subscription had, moreover, placed him
beyond the danger of want. He died in obscurity in 1805.
“Mme. Legros,” says Michelet, “did not see the destruction of the
Bastille. She died a little before. But it was she, none the less, who
had the glory of destroying it. It was she who filled the popular mind
with hatred and horror of this arbitrary prison which had received so
many martyrs of Faith and Thought. The weak hand of a poor woman pulled
down, in reality, that high fortress, threw to the ground its massive
stones, tore down its iron gratings, and razed its towers.”
So much, then, for the celebrated Latude and his heroic deliverer. Among
other notable inmates of Bicêtre may be mentioned the accomplice and
denouncer of Cartouche, who lived forty-three years in a dungeon; the
author of “Justine”--the Marquis de Sade--a perfect example of erotic
madness; and the four sergeants of La Rochelle, those heroic champions
of liberty whom the devotion of two of the house-surgeons would have
saved but for the treachery of the chaplain.
The story of the four sergeants of La Rochelle, so well known in France,
and so often referred to by contemporary French writers, is so little
known in England that it may here with propriety be told; for it was at
La Salpêtrière that the last act, or last but one, of this tragedy was
played.
In the year 1821, under the Restoration, John François Louis Leclerc
Bories, sergeant-major in the 45th regiment of the line, was in garrison
at Paris when he was initiated into the society of the Charbonniers,
corresponding to that of the Carbonari in Italy. The association was a
formidable conspiracy of Liberals and Bonapartists against the monarchy
of the Bourbons, and it was largely recruited from the ranks. Bories
undertook to gain adherents among his comrades, and he initiated
successively a number of non-commissioned officers and soldiers. In
January, 1822, the 45th regiment was moved from Paris to La Rochelle.
Before quitting the capital Bories was placed in relations with La
Fayette, and received from him the halves of several cards, the missing
portions to be presented to him on the line of march by members of the
secret society, who would at the same time communicate to him the orders
of the directing committee. Movements were being prepared at Nantes and
at Saumur, and the chiefs of the Charbonniers wished, if necessary, to
utilise the passage of the regiment through the departments which were
ready to rise. Bories had several interviews along the line of march,
and some imprudent words were spoken. But no order to take up arms was
transmitted, and the 45th arrived at La Rochelle on the 14th of February
without any incident of importance having taken place. By a strange
fatality Bories had been placed under escort at Orleans for having
replied to the provocations of the Swiss soldiers stationed in this
town; and on reaching La Rochelle he was confined in the guard-house,
and afterwards, in consequence of some suspicious circumstances,
transferred to the prison of Nantes. The post of Bories in connection
with the secret society was now filled by a less capable man,
Sergeant-Major Pomier; and at this very moment an unsuccessful attempt
was made against Saumur, under the direction of General Berton. Pursued
from all sides, Berton made his way stealthily to La Rochelle,
determined to try his fortune once more from what he considered a more
favourable point. He placed himself in communication with Pomier and
other chiefs. But nothing was decided, except that they must all hold
themselves in readiness for action. A few days afterwards all the
members of the society serving in the 45th regiment were, one after
another, arrested. The authorities had got wind of what was going on,
and Goubin, Pomier, Goupillon, and a few others, interrogated and
pressed by General Despinois, made complete revelations, Bories
meanwhile remaining firm and impenetrable.
Five months afterwards the accused were brought before the tribunal of
the Seine. There were twenty-five of them, some in the civil, some in
the military service; and they were charged either with belonging to the
conspiracy or with not revealing what they knew about it. No conspiracy,
in the strict legal sense of the word, existed; though the undetermined
aim of the association was sooner or later to take up arms. The only
offence of which the prisoners could be justly accused was that of
belonging to a secret society. The Government prosecutor demanded,
however, sentence of death against twelve of the accused. Among the
advocates for the defence were men, with Chaix-d’Est-Anges, Mocquart,
and others of the same mark, who afterwards reached the highest
positions, and who were all at this time Carbonari and sworn enemies of
the Bourbons. At the end of a trial which had lasted a fortnight the
president of the court asked each of the accused if he had anything to
add to his defence. Bories, whose self-possession had never for one
moment left him, rose and said with much dignity:
“Gentlemen of the jury, the Advocate-General, while declaring that the
most eloquent oratory in the world would be powerless to save me from
public vengeance, has pointed to me as the chief criminal. Well, I
accept this position, and shall deem myself happy if by bringing my head
to the scaffold I can obtain the acquittal of all my comrades.”
He was condemned to death, together with three other sergeants--Goubin,
Raoulx, and Pomier. Goupillon was let off as informer. Seven others were
condemned to imprisonment for different periods, while thirteen more
were acquitted. There were groans and sobs in court when the capital
sentence was pronounced, and public opinion pronounced itself in the
strongest manner in favour of the unfortunate young men, against neither
of whom any overt act was charged. But the Government of Louis XVIII.
was implacable; and on the 21st of September, 1822, the scaffold was
erected on the Place de Grève. The four sergeants submitted to their
fate with heroic calmness, and bent their heads beneath the knife of the
guillotine amid cries of “Vive la Liberté!”
The same evening, to the disgust of everyone, there was a grand party at
the Tuileries.
Serious attempts had been made by the Carbonari to save the unhappy
victims. Through the intermediary of two famous painters--Ary Scheffer
and Horace Vernet, assisted by Colonel Fauvier and other leaders of the
party, the director of Bicêtre had been gained over. He consented to aid
the escape of the four sergeants who were confined in his
establishment--at that time half prison, half asylum--on consideration
of receiving 70,000 francs, estimated as the capitalised value of his
appointment. Unfortunately, however, he confided the affair to the
chaplain of the prison, whom he wished, through friendship and
affection, to take with his own family to foreign parts. The priest
rightly or wrongly felt it to be his duty to give notice to the Prefect
of Police, and just as the projected escape was on the point of being
effected a number of police agents appeared. They began by arresting M.
Margue, one of the surgeons at Bicêtre, and they at the same time seized
10,000 francs in gold. But an energetic man, the house-surgeon,
Guillié-Latouche, managed to get away with the rest of the sum--60,000
francs--in bank notes, and entering Paris at daybreak, placed the money
in the hands of the members of the committee.
[Illustration: THE CHAPEL, SALPÊTRIERE.]
Other attempts were not more successful, and on the day fixed for the
execution a number of Carbonari, with arms concealed beneath their
clothes, stationed themselves at different points, ready to attack the
prisoner’s escort. Meanwhile the central committee, doubting the success
of the enterprise so boldly conceived, could not decide to order an
attack on the forces drawn up by the military authorities. Nothing could
be done. The execution was allowed to take place in the midst of general
indignation.
One of the members of the central committee, Dr. Ulysse Trélat,
afterwards minister and representative of the people, has traced the
following portrait of Bories in his “Esquisse de la Charbonnerie”:--
“Bories was a young man of twenty-six, who, beneath an exterior full of
softness and grace, concealed the noblest and firmest heart. He had
nothing of the soldier but his frankness and his courage, without any of
the faults generally produced by the idleness of barrack life. His
morals were pure, his tastes simple, and his life retired. He gave up
the greater part of his time to reading. Exempt from ambition, his most
ardent wish was to die at the moment of the victory of the people; and
one day he was quite annoyed at someone’s proposing to take him to
General La Fayette. It seemed to him that this offer implied some doubt
as to his sincerity, as well as an intention to stimulate his ardour by
the authority of a great name.”
At Villefranche, Bories’s birthplace, there was a general understanding
among the inhabitants to conceal his tragic end from his old parents. On
their expressing astonishment at not receiving news from their son, they
were informed that his regiment had gone to the colonies.
[Illustration: THE BICETRE, 1710. (_After Gueroult._)]
Another touching story, which has all the character of a legend, is told
in connection with the unfortunate Bories. Until the year 1864 a
broken-down old woman, supporting herself with a stick and carrying a
bunch of faded flowers, was a familiar figure on the left bank of the
Seine. For forty years she had been grieving for the loss of Bories, to
whom in his youth she was engaged to be married. From the cart in which,
with his three comrades, he was driven to the scaffold, he had sought to
console the young girl in her despair by throwing her a bouquet, which
she kept for ever afterwards. She was frequently seen at the tomb of the
four sergeants in the cemetery of Montparnasse; and she was at last
buried near the grave of her lover towards the end of 1864, when the
legendary bouquet was placed with her in the coffin.
It has been said that Bicêtre has, during the present century, been the
scene of several disturbances, In the last century it witnessed serious
insurrections. In 1756 the prisoners rose against the soldiers of the
guard, when two archers and fourteen insurgents were killed. In 1774 a
spy found among the prisoners was crucified. In September, 1792, Bicêtre
made a determined resistance to the bands of slaughterers who arrived to
massacre the inmates. Officials, prisoners, lunatics, all defended
themselves with wonderful courage. Each building was made the object of
a separate siege. Once masters of the place the assassins spared no one.
There was for three nights and three days a frightful carnage, which
even the intervention of Péthion could not stop.
The apologists--not merely of the Revolution, which, as a whole, brought
immeasurable benefit to the French people, but even of the crimes which
accompanied it--have tried to justify the massacres committed in the
prisons of Paris by bands of fanatical ruffians, who had somehow
persuaded themselves that the persons confined were all aristocrats or
priests, and that in slaughtering these enemies of society it mattered
but little if a few inoffensive persons were also put to death. The
allied German powers who were marching upon Paris, and whose outposts
were gradually approaching the capital, had already taken the fortress
of Verdun, and were prepared, if they continued their successful
campaign, to inflict terrible vengeance on the Revolutionists and on the
French nation generally. A counter-revolutionary movement had suddenly
set in among the Royalist proprietors and the loyal, if superstitious,
peasants of Brittany and La Vendée. With the exaggeration sure to
manifest itself at moments of great popular excitement, it was declared
that the enemy was at the gates of Paris; and it was proclaimed among
the fanatics of the Revolution that in a few hours the nobles and
ecclesiastics thrown into prison, in some cases with a view to trial, in
others only as a precautionary measure, would soon be at liberty and
ready to take part, in the slaughter of the Republicans. The people had
been summoned by Danton to the Champ de Mars in order to be enrolled for
service against the enemy. Alarm-bells were sounded, cannons were fired,
and a general war-cry resounded through Paris. “The tocsin,” says a
journal of the period, “was heard on all sides. Everyone ran to take up
arms. Everyone cried out, ‘To the enemy!’ But the enemy is not in the
field alone. The enemy is at Paris, as well as around Verdun. Our foes
are in the Paris prisons. Shall we leave our women, our children, our
aged persons, to the mercy of these wretches? Let us hurry to the
prisons. Let us exterminate these monsters, who will profit by our
absence with the army to murder our wives and our children, to liberate
Louis XVI. from his tower, and to rally the Royalist battalions.” This
terrible cry was at once taken up in a unanimous, universal manner
throughout the streets and public places, at all public meetings, and
finally in the National Assembly itself.
Apart from the purely spontaneous, impulsive movement, meetings were
held after formal deliberations, and it was decided by a resolution that
the aristocrats and priests confined in the prisons must be put to
death.
To return, however, to Bicêtre, which is associated in more than one way
with the Revolution and with the Reign of Terror. In a little courtyard
adjoining the amphitheatre of Bicêtre, on the 15th of April, 1792, was
tried for the first time on a corpse (previous experiments had been made
with live animals) the “decapitating machine,” whose invention, wrongly
attributed to Dr. Guillotin, belongs really to Dr. Louis, perpetual
secretary of the Royal Society of Surgery: whence the name of
“Louisette” given in the first instance to the guillotine.
Some time afterwards, towards the end of 1792, Bicêtre, which had just
been the theatre of such tragic scenes, had the glory of seeing
accomplished within its walls the reforms in the treatment of lunacy
introduced by Pinel. This excellent man, chief physician at Bicêtre, had
begged the Commune of Paris for authority to unchain the violent
lunatics. The next day the fanatical Couthon went to Bicêtre to make
sure that Pinel was “not concealing the enemies of the people among his
madmen.” Astounded and somewhat frightened by the confused shrieking and
howling of the maniacs, and by the rattling of their chains, the surly
Jacobin turned to Pinel and said to him “Why, you must be mad yourself,
citizen, to think of unchaining such animals.”
“I am convinced,” replied Pinel, “that these lunatics are only so
intractable because they are deprived of air and liberty.”
“Well, do what you like,” cried Couthon, as he went away; “do what you
like: I abandon them to you.”
Pinel at once entered the cage of the most terrible of his madmen: an
English captain who had been shut up for forty years, and who, a few
days previously, had killed one of the keepers with a blow from his
fetters. Full of faith, the physician unlocked his irons; and the madman
becoming at once gentle and calm, was, during the two years he had still
to live, Pinel’s most useful assistant. Pinel restored successively to
liberty an old officer who, in a moment of frenzy, had stabbed one of
his own children; a young poet mad from love, who, after leaving
Bicêtre, perished on the scaffold; a soldier formerly in the Royal
Guard; Chevingé, an athlete, the terror of his keepers, who soon
afterwards gave his liberator a striking proof of gratitude by snatching
him from a band of fanatics at the very moment when they were about to
hang him; and fifty others, of all conditions and all countries, who, as
soon as they were treated with humanity, gave up their habits of
violence.
Finally, it may be mentioned that in the old dungeons of Bicêtre Victor
Hugo lays the scene of his “Dernier Jour d’un Condamné.”
It has been seen that neither at Bicêtre nor at La Salpêtrière are
lunatics alone confined. The one recognised madhouse in or near Paris,
to which those whose ideas or actions excite the disapproval of their
friends are told familiarly to go--as, in England, they would be sent to
Hanwell--is Charenton. The Maison de Charenton, situated at about four
miles south-east of Paris, on the road to Lyons, close to the confluence
of the Seine and the Marne, dates from the year 1641, when Sebastien
Leblanc, counsellor of the king and minister of war, presented it ready
furnished to the brothers of La Charité, or of St. Jean de Dieu. A few
years after their installation in the house presented to them, the
brothers of La Charité arranged to receive madmen and epileptic
patients; when, like all the madhouses of the time, Charenton became a
house of detention, where were confined by _lettres de cachet_ prisoners
of state, prodigals, libertines, and others who were thought worthy of a
milder treatment than they would receive in the Bastille or at
Vincennes. In the eighteenth century, and up to the time of the
Revolution, Charenton had accommodation for nearly 100 lunatics, each of
whom had his separate room. The attendance was in the hands of ten
religious persons and fifty-two servants. A few years after the
Revolution, both monastery and hospital were suppressed, and the monks,
together with the lunatics under their charge, dispersed. Soon
afterwards, however, the Directory issued a decree, which forms the
legal basis of the hospital of Charenton as it now exists. “Refuge for
the Mad” was the title given to it; and it was now placed under the
immediate direction of the Minister of the Interior. Insane persons of
both sexes were to be admitted; the indigent ones gratuitously, and
others at a fixed rate of payment. The Abbé de Coulmier, a former member
of the Constituent Assembly, was named director of the establishment;
and, as if in compensation for the injury done to the establishment by
its sudden dispersion, it had additional land assigned to it. The
building could now be enlarged, and a special division was erected for
the women.
M. de Coulmier conducted the house in the most despotic manner; and on
the death of the principal surgeon, M. Gastaldi, in 1805, he assumed
such powers in the medical department that the School of Medicine was
obliged to intervene, when the medical direction was placed in the hands
of Dr. Royer-Collard, brother of the celebrated orator of the same name.
With all his tyranny, M. de Coulmier had many agreeable ways.
Remembering the fury of Saul, calmed by the harp of the youthful David,
and the quieting of savage animals by the lyre of Orpheus, the director,
carried away by his artistic feeling, determined to apply a similar
treatment to the demented ones of Charenton. To carry out his idea he
introduced dancing, dramatic performances, fireworks, and even ballets,
with the assistance of some of the choregraphic celebrities of the
epoch. The imprisoned Marquis de Sade, known by books that no decent
person can read, was the organiser of these entertainments, which were
attended by all Paris.
To the joyous reign of M. de Coulmier succeeded, in 1814, the severe
administration of Roulhac du Maupas. No more singing and dancing now!
Comedies and ballets gave place to useful reforms, and the substitution
of a new medical organisation for the former choregraphic system.
Royer-Collard had suppressed the iron girdles, the fetters, the
handcuffs, and the collars, by which the ungovernable madmen used to be
restrained, and the melancholy ones driven to suicide. Esquirol did away
with the human figures in wicker-work, in which violent maniacs used
sometimes to be enclosed. The new programme met with the full
approbation of the Government. A credit of 2,720,000 francs was voted by
the Chamber of Deputies in July, 1838; and soon afterwards M. de
Montalivet, then Minister of the Interior, laid with due solemnity the
first stone of the new edifice. The memory of this important ceremony is
consecrated by an inscription placed beneath the vestibule of the
principal building.
At the back of the building is the wood of Vincennes, from which it is
separated only by a wall, with a gate for the inmates of the asylum. In
front the landscape comprises the immense and fertile plain of Maisons
Alfort, Ivry, and Choisy-le-Roi. The panorama is one of the finest
offered by the environs of Paris. The capricious meanderings of the
Marne, with its green banks and its flower-clad islands, the picturesque
hill of Alfort, the interesting domain of Charentonneau; villages
sparkling beneath the sun in the midst of fields and meadows: on the
horizon the smiling slopes of Saint-Maur, Créteil, Champigny,
Chenevières, and Boissy-Saint-Lèger; the forest of Sénart,
Villeneuve-St.-Georges--which, deserted by its inhabitants, was
occupied, during the last war, in every house and every room by German
troops, who left behind them sad proofs of their destructiveness; and,
finally, the majestic course of the Seine, and its union with the Marne.
The new establishment has been so built that from nearly every room the
patients can gladden their eyes and refresh their minds by contemplating
the enchanting scenery.
The patients are grouped together, not with reference to their social
rank, but according to the medical peculiarities of each particular
case. In the first division are patients who have reached the
convalescent stage, and who are quiet. In the second are the lunatics
who know how to behave themselves, but are still subject to fits of
insanity. The third class consists of incurable lunatics, who are
nevertheless capable of obeying orders. The fourth is reserved for
incurable lunatics, difficult to govern; the fifth for paralytic
lunatics; the sixth for lunatics who have been attacked by some ordinary
malady; the seventh for epileptic patients; and the eighth for violent
uncontrolable maniacs.
[Illustration: DINNER TIME AT BICÊTRE.]
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO BICÊTRE.]
During the last twenty or thirty years a hydropathic establishment has
been added to the asylum, together with workshops for the occupation and
amusement of the convalescent.
On the 2nd of February, 1866, the Empress paid a visit to Charenton, and
took the institution under her special patronage. She began by proposing
the construction of a department for women on the same system and the
same scale as the well-organised department for men; and, adopting the
Empress’s idea, the legislative body voted an important sum towards
carrying it out.
Charenton receives about 600 patients, 300 men and 300 women; but the
number would be much larger were there sufficient accommodation. The
terms for the paying patients are 1,500 francs for the first class,
1,200 for the second, and 900 for the third, while for those who have a
separate room 900 francs extra, as the wages of a servant, are charged.
Needless to add that the patients, paying or non-paying, are all on an
equality as regards medical treatment. The quality and variety of the
cooking vary with the different classes. The chief elements of the
population of Charenton are furnished by officials and clerks, artists
and men of letters, merchants, dealers in wine and spirits, officers and
soldiers. Every type of madness may there be studied, from dementia and
melancholia to mania. Many of the patients owe their malady to
hereditary predisposition, alcoholic excesses, and other abuses,
domestic calamities, reverses of fortune, and intellectual labour unduly
prolonged.
[Illustration: THE BIÈVRE.]
Nothing is spared to provide the patients with salutary occupations,
agreeable pastimes, and innocent amusements. They are encouraged to
study music, singing, and drawing, and for those who have no artistic
tastes, cards, draughts, dominoes, billiards, and bowls are provided.
Among the outdoor recreations walks in the most beautiful parts of the
wood of Vincennes, carriage excursions and picnics may be mentioned. The
Thursday and Sunday concerts form, however, the great delight of the
place. These are not given by the director simply as entertainments.
They are prescribed by the regulations, and have formed part of the
institutions of the House since 1811. In the spacious hall, which serves
at once as ball-room and concert-room, assemble upwards of a hundred
convalescents of both sexes. In the dress and demeanour of those present
there is nothing remarkable, except that they are more quietly attired,
and generally better behaved than in fashionable society. The
billiard-room is much frequented, and the general aspect of the
card-room reminds Dr. Linas of one of the aristocratic Paris clubs.
It should have been mentioned that at the periodical concerts the music
is contributed by the patients, some of whom are singers, others
violinists or pianists. The officials of the establishment join the
inmates either as performers or among the audience. In like manner the
patients and attendants act together in the comedies and dramas which
are sometimes represented.
Charenton, though placed under the direction of the Ministry of the
Interior, has its own particular administration, in which a clerk may in
due time, after successive promotions, rise to be a functionary of
almost the first rank. No one voluntarily quits the establishment; and
the servants, like the officials, remain there until they are compelled
by old age to resign. Charenton, like other madhouses, has had
celebrities among its inmates, including the Marquis de Sade, who, after
sending one of his infamous books to Napoleon, was at once ordered to be
arrested and placed in a lunatic asylum; the same punishment which, at a
later date, was inflicted by the Emperor Nicholas on a writer, blameless
in his morality, who had attacked the existing order of things in
Russia.