Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/343

 decent burial, were surely an end more honourable and less nauseous than illness and death in a public hospital of Paris in the much lauded and poetised days of the ancien régime.

A well-known charitable institution of France is the order of the Little Sisters of the Poor. These Little Sisters are highly popular, and whenever anyone bien pensant (as the Catholics call themselves) dies, his or her relatives hasten to send all the wardrobe of the defunct to the Little Sisters. A branch house is almost beside me, and I see cartloads of clothes driven off frequently for sale from its door. I visited the establishment once, and cannot say that I was much impressed with the spirit of charity revealed to me. To enter this asylum, men and women must have attained the age of sixty. The old men are better cared for, better treated, by the Little Sisters than the old women. The best side of the house is theirs; they have a handsome covered terrace to walk along when they are not in the gardens, have a smoking-room, and can spend their days playing cards. Their quilts are of silk and velvet patchwork, while the old women must be thankful for cotton, and the nun who showed me over the establishment reserved for the men all her smiles and pleasant greetings. The poor old women got nothing but sour looks and silence, and while the men amused themselves, these were