Part 9 (1/2)
It was like one of our loveliest mornings in June--an inspiriting, sunny, balmy day, all softness and beauty--and we crossed the Tuileries by one of its superb avenues, and kept down the bank of the river to the island. With the errand on which we were bound in our minds, it was impossible not to be struck very forcibly with our own exquisite enjoyment of life. I am sure I never felt my veins fuller of the pleasure of health and motion; and I never saw a day when everything about me seemed better worth living for. The splendid palace of the Louvre, with its long _facade_ of nearly half a mile, lay in the mellowest suns.h.i.+ne on our left; the lively river, covered with boats, and spanned with its magnificent and crowded bridges on our right; the view of the island, with its ma.s.sive old structures below, and the fine gray towers of the church of _Notre Dame_ rising, dark and gloomy, in the distance, rendered it difficult to realize anything but life and pleasure. That under those very towers, which added so much to the beauty of the scene, there lay a thousand and more of poor wretches dying of a plague, was a thought my mind would not retain a moment.
Half an hour's walk brought us to the _Place Notre Dame_, on one side of which, next this celebrated church, stands the hospital. My friend entered, leaving me to wait till he had found an acquaintance of whom he could borrow a diploma. A hea.r.s.e was standing at the door of the church, and I went in for a moment. A few mourners, with the appearance of extreme poverty, were kneeling round a coffin at one of the side altars; and a solitary priest, with an attendant boy, was mumbling the prayers for the dead. As I came out, another hea.r.s.e drove up, with a rough coffin, scantily covered with a pall, and followed by one poor old man. They hurried in, and I strolled around the square.
Fifteen or twenty water-carriers were filling their buckets at the fountain opposite, singing and laughing; and at the same moment four different litters crossed toward the hospital, each with its two or three followers, women and children, friends or relatives of the sick, accompanying them to the door, where they parted from them, most probably for ever. The litters were set down a moment before ascending the steps; the crowd pressed around and lifted the coa.r.s.e curtains; farewells were exchanged, and the sick alone pa.s.sed in. I did not see any great demonstration of feeling in the particular cases that were before me; but I can conceive, in the almost deadly certainty of this disease, that these hasty partings at the door of the hospital might often be scenes of unsurpa.s.sed suffering and distress.
I waited, perhaps, ten minutes more. In the whole time that I had been there, twelve litters, bearing the sick, had entered the _Hotel Dieu_.
As I exhibited the borrowed diploma, the thirteenth arrived, and with it a young man, whose violent and uncontrolled grief worked so far on the soldier at the door, that he allowed him to pa.s.s. I followed the bearers to the yard, interested exceedingly to observe the first treatment and manner of reception. They wound slowly up the stone staircase to the upper story, and entered the female department--a long low room, containing nearly a hundred beds, placed in alleys scarce two feet from each other. Nearly all were occupied, and those which were empty my friend told me were vacated by deaths yesterday.
They set down the litter by the side of a narrow cot, with coa.r.s.e but clean sheets, and a _Soeur de Charite_, with a white cap, and a cross at her girdle, came and took off the canopy. A young woman, of apparently twenty-five, was beneath, absolutely convulsed with agony.
Her eyes were started from their sockets, her mouth foamed, and her face was of a frightful, livid purple. I never saw so horrible a sight. She had been taken in perfect health only three hours before, but her features looked to me marked with a year of pain. The first attempt to lift her produced violent vomiting, and I thought she must die instantly. They covered her up in bed, and leaving the man who came with her hanging over her with the moan of one deprived of his senses, they went to receive others, who were entering in the same manner. I inquired of my companion how soon she would be attended to.
He said, ”possibly in an hour, as the physician was just commencing his rounds.” An hour after this I pa.s.sed the bed of this poor woman, and she had not yet been visited. Her husband answered my question with a choking voice and a flood of tears.
I pa.s.sed down the ward, and found nineteen or twenty in the last agonies of death. They lay perfectly still, and seemed benumbed. I felt the limbs of several, and found them quite cold. The stomach only had a little warmth. Now and then a half groan escaped those who seemed the strongest; but with the exception of the universally open mouth and upturned ghastly eye, there were no signs of much suffering.
I found two who must have been dead half an hour, undiscovered by the attendants. One of them was an old woman, nearly gray, with a very bad expression of face, who was perfectly cold--lips, limbs, body, and all. The other was younger, and looked as if she had died in pain.
Her eyes appeared as if they had been forced half out of the sockets, and her skin was of the most livid and deathly purple. The woman in the next bed told me she had died since the _Soeur de Charite_ had been there. It is horrible to think how these poor creatures may suffer in the very midst of the provisions that are made professedly for their relief. I asked why a simple prescription of treatment might not be drawn up the physicians, and administered by the numerous medical students who were in Paris, that as few as possible might suffer from delay. ”Because,” said my companion, ”the chief physicians must do everything _personally_, to study the complaint.” And so, I verily believe, more human lives are sacrificed in waiting for experiments, than ever will be saved by the results. My blood boiled from the beginning to the end of this melancholy visit.
I wandered about alone among the beds till my heart was sick, and I could bear it no longer; and then rejoined my friend, who was in the train of one of the physicians, making the rounds. One would think a dying person should be treated with kindness. I never saw a rougher or more heartless manner than that of the celebrated Dr. ----, at the bedsides of these poor creatures. A harsh question, a rude pulling open of the mouth, to look at the tongue, a sentence or two of unsuppressed comments to the students on the progress of the disease, and the train pa.s.sed on. If discouragement and despair are not medicines, I should think the visits of such physicians were of little avail. The wretched sufferers turned away their heads after he had gone, in every instance that I saw, with an expression of visibly increased distress. Several of them refused to answer his questions altogether.
On reaching the bottom of the _Salle St. Monique_, one of the male wards, I heard loud voices and laughter. I had noticed much more groaning and complaining in pa.s.sing among the men, and the horrible discordance struck me as something infernal. It proceeded from one of the sides to which the patients had been removed who were recovering.
The most successful treatment has been found to be _punch_, very strong, with but little acid, and being permitted to drink as much as they would, they had become partially intoxicated. It was a fiendish sight, positively. They were sitting up, and reaching from one bed to the other, and with their still pallid faces and blue lips, and the hospital dress of white, they looked like so many carousing corpses. I turned away from them in horror.
I was stopped in the door-way by a litter entering with a sick woman.
They set her down in the main pa.s.sage between the beds, and left her a moment to find a place for her. She seemed to have an interval of pain, and rose up on one hand, and looked about her very earnestly. I followed the direction of her eyes, and could easily imagine her sensations. Twenty or thirty death-like faces were turned toward her from the different beds, and the groans of the dying and the distressed came from every side. She was without a friend whom she knew, sick of a mortal disease, and abandoned to the mercy of those whose kindness is mercenary and habitual, and of course without sympathy or feeling. Was it not enough alone, if she had been far less ill, to imbitter the very fountains of life, and kill her with mere fright and horror? She sank down upon the litter again, and drew her shawl over her head. I had seen enough of suffering, and I left the place.
On reaching the lower staircase, my friend proposed to me to look into the _dead-room_. We descended to a large dark apartment below the street-level, lighted by a lamp fixed to the wall. Sixty or seventy bodies lay on the floor, some of them quite uncovered, and some wrapped in mats. I could not see distinctly enough by the dim light, to judge of their discoloration. They appeared mostly old and emaciated.
I can not describe the sensation of relief with which I breathed the free air once more. I had no fear of the cholera, but the suffering and misery I had seen, oppressed and half smothered me. Every one who has walked through an hospital, will remember how natural it is to subdue the breath, and close the nostrils to the smells of medicine and the close air. The fact, too, that the question of contagion is still disputed, though I fully believe the cholera _not_ to be contagious, might have had some effect. My breast heaved, however, as if a weight had risen from my lungs, and I walked home, blessing G.o.d for health, with undissembled grat.i.tude.
P. S.--I began this account of my visit to the _Hotel Dieu_ yesterday.
As I am perfectly well this morning, I think the point of non-contagion, in my own case at least, is clear. I breathed the same air with the dying and the diseased for two hours, and felt of nearly a hundred to be satisfied of the curious phenomena of the vital heat.
Perhaps an experiment of this sort in a man not professionally a physician, may be considered rash or useless; and I would not willingly be thought to have done it from any puerile curiosity. I have been interested in such subjects always; and I considered the fact that the king's sons had been permitted to visit the hospital, a sufficient a.s.surance that the physicians were seriously convinced there could be no possible danger. If I need an apology, it may be found in this.
LETTER XVII.
LEGION OF HONOR--PRESENTATION TO THE KING--THE THRONE OF FRANCE--THE QUEEN AND THE PRINCESSES--COUNTESS GUICCIOLI--THE LATE DUEL--THE SEASON OF CARNIVAL--ANOTHER FANCY BALL-- DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC MASKERS--STREET MASKING--BALL AT THE PALACE--THE YOUNG DUKE OF ORLEANS-- PRINCESS CHRISTINE--LORD HARRY VANE--HEIR OF CARDINAL RICHELIEU--VILLIERS--BERNARD, FABVIER, COUSIN, AND OTHER DISTINGUISHED CHARACTERS--THE SUPPER--THE GLa.s.s VERANDAH, ETC.
As I was getting out of a _fiacre_ this morning on the Boulevard, I observed that the driver had the cross of the legion of honor, worn very modestly under his coat. On taking a second look at his face, I was struck with its soldier-like, honest expression; and with the fear that I might imply a doubt by a question, I simply observed, that he probably received it from Napoleon. He drew himself up a little as he a.s.sented, and with half a smile pulled the coa.r.s.e cape of his coat across his bosom. It was done evidently with a mixed feeling of pride and a dislike of ostentation, which showed the nurture of Napoleon. It is astonis.h.i.+ng how superior every being seems to have become that served under him. Wherever you find an old soldier of the ”emperor,”
as they delight to call him, you find a n.o.ble, brave, unpretending man. On mentioning this circ.u.mstance to a friend, he informed me, that it was possibly a man who was well known, from rather a tragical circ.u.mstance. He had driven a gentleman to a party one night, who was dissatisfied with him, for some reason or other, and abused him very grossly. The _cocher_ the next morning sent him a challenge; and, as the cross of honor levels all distinctions, he was compelled to fight him, and was shot dead at the first fire.
Honors of this sort must be a very great incentive. They are worn very proudly in France. You see men of all cla.s.ses, with the striped riband in their b.u.t.ton-hole, marking them as the heroes of the three days of July. The Poles and the French and English, who fought well at Warsaw, wear also a badge; and it certainly produces a feeling of respect as one pa.s.ses them in the street. There are several very young men, lads really, who are wandering about Paris, with the latter distinction on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and every indication that it is all they have brought away from their unhappy country. The Poles are coming in now from every quarter. I meet occasionally in society the celebrated Polish countess, who lost her property and was compelled to flee, for her devotion to the cause. Louis Philippe has formed a regiment of the refugees, and sent them to Algiers. He allows no liberalists to remain in Paris, if he can help it. The Spaniards and Italians, particularly, are ordered off to Tours, and other provincial towns, the instant they become pensioners upon the government.
I was presented last night, with Mr. Carr and Mr. Ritchie, two of our countrymen, to the king. We were very naturally prepared for an embarra.s.sing ceremony--an expectation which was not lessened, in my case, by the necessity of a laced coat, breeches, and sword. We drove into the court of the Tuileries, as the palace clock struck nine, in the costume of courtiers of the time of Louis the Twelfth, very anxious about the tenacity of our knee-buckles, and not at all satisfied as to the justice done to our unaccustomed proportions by the tailor. To say nothing of my looks, I am sure I should have _felt_ much more like a gentleman in my _costume bourgeois_. By the time we had been pa.s.sed through the hands of all the chamberlains, however, and walked through all the preparatory halls and drawing-rooms, each with its complement of gentlemen in waiting, dressed like ourselves in lace and small-clothes, I became more reconciled to myself, and began to _feel_ that I might possibly have looked out of place in my ordinary dress. The atmosphere of a court is very contagious in this particular.
After being sufficiently astonished with long rooms, frescoes, and guardsmen apparently seven or eight feet high, (the tallest men I ever saw, standing with halberds at the doors), we were introduced into the _Salle du Trone_--a large hall lined with crimson velvet throughout, with the throne in the centre of one of the sides. Some half dozen gentlemen were standing about the fire, conversing very familiarly, among whom was the British amba.s.sador, Lord Grenville, and the Brazilian minister, both of whom I had met before. The king was not there. The Swedish minister, a n.o.ble-looking man, with snow-white hair, was the only other official person present, each of the ministers having come to present one or two of his countrymen. The king entered in a few moments, in the simple uniform of the line, and joined the group at the fire, with the most familiar and cordial politeness; each minister presenting his countrymen as occasion offered, certainly with far less ceremony than one sees at most dinner-parties in America. After talking a few minutes with Lord Grenville, inquiring the progress of the cholera, he turned to Mr.