Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/230

246 At midnight the ball closed, and we wandered home in the lovely moonlight night.

.—I visited this place the following day. In this immense establishment, is contained, in classified order, the greater part of the unfortunates of the capital, who formerly used to expose their misery openly. The number of persons cared for here, amounts to about four thousand. Four hundred nurses attend to them, under the direction of physicians. Every particular species of disease is attended to in its own division; each peculiar division has its own peculiar house, its garden or grounds, and also its own physicians. I cannot sufficiently commend the order, cleanliness, the good air, nay, even comfort, which I found in this establishment, where, by wise centralization and administration, the municipal government of Paris assists a great portion of the wretchedness of its indigent population, and renders helplessness as bearable as possible, by the care which is extended to it.

I was least satisfied with the apartment in which the insane were kept—an immense attic, where they sat by hundreds; and the unfortunate raving maniacs, in their little rooms, which seemed too me quite too much like the cells in which wild beasts are kept—perhaps it cannot be otherwise! Yet cleanliness prevailed even here. But the powerful women who had the charge of these unfortunates of their own sex, gave me small confidence in their humane treatment.

The grounds in which these poor people were, at the time I was there, walking or sitting, are extensive.