LA MORGUE.

Ar Paris every face I met appeared to be so exceedingly happy and so remarkably polite that from the hour of my arrival I had been in the habit, without the slightest precaution, of walking anywhere at any time of day or night. Happening, however, to mention to a French gentleman the late hour at which, entirely alone, I had passed along a certain district, he told me, very gravely, that there were in Paris-as indeed there are in all countries-great numbers of men, never to be seen in daylight, who subsist by robbery and occasionally by murder; that after dark they haunt lonely spots, and that not unfrequently, after knocking down and robbing their victims, they have summarily chucked them over the bridges they were in the act of crossing into the Seine.

“You must, my dear ('mon cher'), be more careful," he said to me, with very great kindness, "or you will find your way to the Morgue!" and as I had often from others heard it was the

place in which all dead bodies found in the streets of Paris or in the Seine are exposed, and as on the following day I had occasion to be in its neighbourhood, I determined I would fulfil my kind friend's prophecy by "finding my way to it." Accordingly, walking along the Quai, I perceived on the banks of the Seine, close before me, touching the extremity of the Marché Neuf-indeed, the nice, fresh, green vegetables in the last of the booths ranged along the wall of the Quai actually touched it-a small, low, substantial Doric building, constructed of massive, roughly-hewn stones, as large as those commonly used in England for a county jail.

On gazing at it attentively for a few minutes a stranger might consider it to be a post-office, for a certain proportion of the crowd that was continually passing along the thoroughfare in which it stood kept what is commonly called "popping in," while about the same number

just as if they had deposited their letters were as regularly popping out, and then proceeding on their course.

On the east wall of this little building there hung, singing in a cage, a bullfinch, belonging to one of the vegetable-selling women in the market. On the right, standing on a chair

and surrounded by a gaping crowd, was a travelling conjuror, who appeared to possess the power of making every face of his attendant assembly smile or grin with more or less delight.

After standing for some time, listening some

times to the bullfinch, sometimes to the conjuror, but more constantly looking towards the little building between them, I approached its door, from which, just as I entered it, there walked out arm-in-arm two well-dressed ladies, with flowers in their bonnets. On entering a small room-it was La Morgue-I saw immediately before me a partition, composed of large clean windows, through each of which a small group of people, looking over each other's heads, were intently gazing. Within this partition, on the wall opposite to me, was hanging, and apparently dripping, a long, thin mass of worthless and nondescript substance that looked like old rags. On approaching the smallest of the groups I saw close to me, on the other side of the glass partition, five black inclined planes, on one of which there lay on its back, with a nose crushed flat like a negro, with its cheeks swelled out exactly as if it were loudly blowing a trumpet, the naked, livid corpse of a robust, well-formed young woman of about twenty years of age. The face, throat, chest, arms, and legs below

the knees were deeply discoloured, and yet, for some reason, the thighs were quite white! The soles of her feet, which were stiffly upturned, had been so coddled by the water in which she had been drowned, that they appeared to be almost honeycombed. From the wall above there projected eight little streams, about the size of those which flow from the rose of an ordinary garden watering-pot, arranged to fall on her face, throat, neck, and legs (round her middle there was wrapped a narrow piece of oil-cloth), to keep the body wet and cool.

Above her, hanging on pegs, was the miserable inventory of her dress: a pair of worn-out shoes, ragged stockings, shift, and the dripping mass (her spotted cotton gown and petticoat) which I had already observed. A more revolting, ghastly, horrid, painful sight I fancied at the moment I had never before beheld; and yet the living picture immediately in front of it was so infinitely more appalling, it offered for reflection so important a moral, that my eyes soon turned from the dead to the various groups of people who were gazing upon it; and as my object was to observe rather than be observed, I managed, with some difficulty, to get into the right-hand corner of the partition, where I was not only close to the glass, but could see

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countenance of everybody within the Morgue."

At first I endeavoured to write down, in shorthand, merely the sexes and apparent ages of the people who kept dropping in; the tide, however, in and out was so great, the stream of coming-in faces and departing backs was so continuous and conflicting, that I found it to be utterly impossible, and I can, therefore, offer but a faint sketch of what I witnessed.

Among those whose eyes were steadily fixed upon the corpse were four or five young men with beards; among them stood several women, old and young, two or three of whom had children in their arms. One boy, of about five years old, came in, carrying an infant on his back. Many people entered with baskets in their hands. One man had on his shoulders, and towering above his head, half a sack of coals. "Oh, Dieu! que vilain !" said an old woman in a white cap, uplifting the palms of both hands, and stepping backwards as her eyes first caught sight of the corpse. Then came in two soldiers; then a fashionably and exceedingly well dressed lady, with two daughters, one about sixteen, the other about eleven, all three with flowers in their bonnets; then a well-dressed maid, carrying an infant. "MON DIEU!!!" exclaimed