A FRENCH CRIPPLES' HOME.
ON a stormy, blustering day in March, we bailed a cab, and bade the driver find the Rue Lecourbe, which on our map of Paris seemed to hide itself in a tangle of unfamiliar streets. We drove past the Invalides into desolate, unfinished widths of boulevards, along desert lanes, where window-panes were stuffed with rags, doors hung off their hinges, the coloured stripes and letters on the plaster were faded or peeling off, —a quartier where energy seemed to fail even in mischief, and every building spoke of reckless discomfort, or sordid poverty, unrelieved by one sign of activity or endeavour. Our yellow cab jolted and lurched through deep holes, mud-splashed and rain-pelted. We began to lose heart, to believe we were being driven into desolation, when a brick wall was reached, and we stopped at a door over which was written, '• Hospital for Incurable Children."
There were halt and maimed already in the dingy little porter's room ; but a smiling little janitor limped up to us, and bade us follow him. There was a space to traverse of rough ground, a garden planned but unfinished, with St. Vincent de Paul, benevolent on his plaster pedestal, as over- seer, and many puddles beneath. Our little guide made us enter a narrow door in the main building, and showed us into a room whence soft sounds of music met our ears. A most curious little room ! All one side was a grotto, a real cavernous grotto of brown pasteboard, very rocky. A niche near the ceiling held a little blue and white Madonna,—a gold crown on her yellow-plaster hair, bright pink cheeks, a paper lily in her hand. The grotto had a deep hollow. In its shades stood a large pot with curious flowers, efforts of imagina- tion in painted metal. A figure of the same size as the pot knelt before it. Some wooden rosaries, with beads rather larger than the worshipper's head, hung in festoons from the rugged edges of the grotto. There was very little and very plain furniture for the rest, and a poor little piano, responding as well as it could to the touch of a blind lad in a dark uniform, who continued to play while we waited.
By-and-by our guide returned and summoned us to another room, where we found the Brother-Superior, a grave, courteous person, of tall, massive figure. He bade us be seated on the bare wooden benches of his study, and answered all my questions with kindness and patience. The establishment had begun with most modest efforts. The founders, M. Gay and the Frere Alphonse, took three little cripples,—a large oil picture testified to this. Gradually funds had been gathered, the house begun, added to bit by bit. Now they had two hundred children and twenty Freres, and, alas ! had constantly to refuse more applicants for lack of space. " The only recommendation needed is poverty, and that," he added with a fine little smile, " they all possess." " No yearly sum is paid by or for them ; many are relieved, but none are sent away, unless the parents take them of their own accord. We keep them till they are twenty ; after that age, the City of Paris can admit them to an institution for the purpose ; but when there the numbers are restricted, there are none here but the incurably afflicted." The reverend brother was grave, dignified, absolutely simple in tone and manner. When he perceived that the list of my questions was at its end, he rose and proposed to show us everything, apologising as he did so for the bare and poor accommodation in the Hospice as compared to similar in- stitutions in England. " We are quite poor," he said, " and you must excuse all that is lacking."
First we visited the class-rooms and refectory on the ground- floor,—poor as to architecture or ornament, but long, airy light rooms, redolent of soapsuds and hearthstone ; for, being Saturday, a great cleaning was going on ; benches stood on their heads, tables were rearing their stout legs aloft, and serving-brothers and little lads were scouring, rubbing, flourishing dusters in a very pleasant and homely manner. " When they can do active work, it raises their spirits to be of use," the Frere said; " we have plenty of little housemaids." Windows opened on to a playground, where puddles in abundance made spots of reflected sunshine, and a small St. Vincent held his little boy in sole possession ; but there were groups of boys on the pavement and at the open casement, and some began to go out as we entered the room,—with crutches, with club-feet, some armless ; but all who could walk, or swing themselves on sticks, were in movement, shouting and chattering. A serving-brother was with them ; and out of a group, a little bright-eyed lad was picked to show us that he, who had no arms (never had had arms), could, by means of an arm of jointed wood adroitly fastened to his shoulders, and cunningly fashioned, now not only write, but draw ; and there was much twinkling of eyes and chuckling over the great joke that he was going to be an artist ! One almost lost the sense of grief and pity amongst those poor cripples, so absolutely without bashful fear were they. When the superior put his broad strong hand on a blind boy's shoulder, the look of confidence, the smile that broke over his face, and the faces of the nearest to him, were quite beautiful. " Yes," he answered quietly ; " I am like their papa to these children."
The dinner for the blind is served apart in a class- room. There were two smaller class-rooms, in one of which the music-master was giving a lesson ; but he begged us to go over the rest of the building, and to return to hear his pupils ; so we went along a wide stone corridor to the kitchen and offices. Ah ! what a kitchen ! cook's paradise ! High, airy, spacious, with a great oval, flat- topped stove in the middle (an underground chimney carries off the smoke); great pipes of shining copper from the roof bring cold water down, and carry it back hot to the upper floors. On the large, level surface, glittering pink copper and silvery tin pans and pots ; great oven-doors in the sides ; two brass pipes with swan-heads, rearing themselves with dignity to pour out hot water for kitchen use ; no smoke, no roaring flame, save when a round lid was raised to let a pan be set on the circle of bright coal. A brass rod slung above two sides, on which to hang whatever needs drying close to the heat. There were pans and kettles and pots on the white walls, a goodly set of deep red crocks for vegetables and bread, and a machine in the scullery to peel potatoes and to scrape and pound scraps of bread for soup. On one side of the kitchen. was a black stove and hot-plate for use during repairs of the fourneau Laroche (the centre stove).
We looked into two sculleries, and a dairy with great creamy milk-pans (they have six cows) ; a larder cool and dark, with a carcass of a sheep, and great purple joints hanging; on a shelf were some delightful big sponge- cakes. " Ah ! so you have cakes also !" " Yes; that was for our patron saint." " You had made good pro- vision," the Superior said to the cooking-brother, a Friar Tuck, as brawny and shiny and good-humoured as a cook should be. " Plenty of milk," I remarked. " Yes, indeed; it is needed for the coffee of Sunday ; on other days, those who are well have soup. We do not bring them up as gentlemen, but as the poor ; they are of the poor ; but on God's day all should have a character of abundance and pleasure ; one needs that," he said, smiling a little, " even in eating, a sense of fete on that day." The usual meals are : breakfast at 7, dinner at 11, supper at 5 for the little ones, at 7 for the elders. Those in the infirmary have meat twice a day.
We went next upstairs to the dormitories, of which there are eight, each with its little partition added for a Frere to sleep in. Everywhere we found the same cleanliness and light; no pictures were on the walls ; there was no gay patchwork all was plain white. But the polished floors, with prismatic reflections on their brown, smooth surface, gave a tone of colour to the whole, and took away all the bare and sordid look which all establishments of the kind in England are apt to wear. In each dormitory was an altar, and plenty of tinsel and sham flowers.
Downstairs was a large lavatory with white tiles, and a bath- room, or rather, a room with plenty of baths in it, and hot and cold water, with cocks cunningly devised, so that no child could turn it on for himself,—a Frere must be present. There was a long, wide room upstairs as playroom for the little cripples who could not walk. For them an outdoor playground was arranged on the flat roof of one of the buildings, with a railing—plants and birds on it—so that there was no need for these helpless ones to leave their floor; and from that room, as from the infirmary ward, a door opened on to a gallery in the chapel, so that they might attend the services and hear the hymns.
In the infirmary are twenty-four beds Many pale little faces turned wistful, patient eyes on us as we passed. Such slender white hands lay helpless on the coverlets !—a toy or picture-book on some ; on one, a shabby little horse—a cripple horse. We spoke to some. The Frere took the face of one in his- large hand. He had a hump on his chest and on the shoulder, but such a round, rosy face, that I had asked what ailed him. The Frere pulled the coverlet a little way down and touched the poor hump, but quite as a matter of course, and then with a shake of his kind head, " Little scamp !" he said caressingly, and the little scamp grinned all over his round face. There was a delicious singing and chirping in every part of the house- -birdcages with canaries chiefly—and in the infirmary a glass. bowl with a dreadfully magnified grey lizard, which looked like a wicked young crocodile, but which lived in apparent harmony beside the paper bigonias, a painted metal St. Vincent, and some birds—on a ledge, and which the boys said came from Mexico.
The chapel had so many blue and red statues, so much patchwork and paper flower-pots, that it was less beautiful' in my eyes than all the rest of what I saw ; but no doubt the gay hues delight the children, and then, "We accept all;,what- ever we are given,—and we only can have what is given to us," the Frere said, geritly.
Now came the workshops downstairs, filled with wonderful little halt and maimed workmen who are busy breadwinners for the more afflicted, and who push their little world on its way with crippled, intelligent fingers and active zeal. A book- binding shop,—a very small mis-shapen teacher, no higher than his table, with brilliant eyes and eager smile, showed us piles of papers ready to bind, and heaps of volumes excellently bound. A shoemaking and mending shop, dedicated to St. Crispin. Each has its special saint ; only the tailor-shop had the ubiquitous St. Vincent. " Was he, then, a tailor ?" I asked, "this good St. Vincent," when we entered the work-room, where lads sat stitching and cutting. " Nay ; but we do not know a tailor-saint." " Then you must make one." Ah, yes ! Here, thou!"—he clapped a sweet-faced, pale lad on the shoulder—" thou shalt become a saint, and we will have a saint-tailor." There was much smiling at this. A work- shop for brushes, clothes-brushes, hat-brushes, mats,—all the mending and making is done there. Some of the infirm have gone forth as teachers of music or letters, as clerks, &c.
By this time the hour for musical repetition was reached, and we were invited to return to the first class-room, where the weekly concert was to take place, and where the orchestra was assembling. There was much shuffling of feet and scraping of benches. A string of blind lads, touching each one the next boy's shoulder, led by one pair of seeing eyes, came in last. We were given seats behind a great drum, a bassoon, and a double-bass. There was an array of brass mouths on the opposite section of the circle which the per- formers formed round the space in which their master and leader stood,—a complete orchestra, in which not one but was afflicted in some degree—taus infirmes—and many quite blind. The alert, slender figure of the master sprang from side to side, touching one, gesticulating to another, and then a waltz struck np,—a brilliant waltz of Strauss's ; flowing, swaying strains of melody, meant for the graceful rhythm of swift-moving feet. What a contrast, the music and the musicians ! We could scarcely keep back tears as we listened and looked. When we had applauded at the end, the master offered another piece —offered a choice of Wagner, of the " Pastoral Symphony," of Weber—what would we like ?—or Saint Satins' Orient et Occident." My companion knew and liked that piece, so we begged for it, and the master, saying, " Certainly ; it is an extremely difficult piece," went back to the centre of his performers and waved his conductor's stick. All through the beautiful cantata I stood spell-bound. At Lamoureux I bad hardly heard more excellent rendering of the music —and such beautiful music !—and there was such pathos in the scene ! Before me the tall neck of the bass rose like some crimson bird, a blue arm stretched up, and a delicate child-hand grasped it. The cropped head first caught the light at the outlines of his little pink ears. As he leaned against a table, one did not see the poor feeble legs of him, while he drew deep sounds with his small strength from the docile monster he embraced. Beyond him, the brazen coils of a huge wind instrument, like a tamed and converted serpent ; and then the great white drum, obedient to its tiny ruler's strokes. How we clapped and bravo'd when it was ended, and compli- mented the master, who with modest confidence acknowledged our admiring words ! " Do you find the blind are specially musical ?" I asked. " Certainly the blind—all the cripples— the more they are afflicted, the keener their sense of music ; and it raises them ; it is a solace," he said very earnestly ; " but you must now hear my pianist."
We had stayed so long that we could only give a short time to the pianists. The Frere took us into the room where we had been on our arrival, the room with the grotto. I think he smiled rather ironically at the grotto, the good Fri:re. "That is the little visionary," he said, when I asked the meaning of the kneeling doll by the large flower-pot. " It is the grotto of Lourdes." But he said nothing further about it, nor spoke of any miraculous cures. There was great. dignity and some reserve about the Frere, and much guileless- ness. One blind lad played the " Berceuse " of Chopin to us. The piano was not sweet, poor thing ! but the boy played well. Then, while we were saying our farewells, a little blind boy came in, feeling his way. " Oh ! you must stop and hear my genius," the master said. We protested we had no time. " Well, at any rate choose a word. Look, Jean ! What has the lady in her hand? Or, no ! give me a book !" He seized a grammar, and bade me open and point to a word,—any word." I pointed silently to besoin. He shut the book and seated himself at the piano. " Now, Jean, attention !" The little fellow stood with his back to the piano and listened. The master played a few notes, stopped, began again, played a lovely little phrase, a motif; then, turning round, " What is the word?" Besoin, said the boy. We did not inquire how the music revealed its word, but the master told us he was inventing a complete language in music, by which they could speak to each other and say what they chose.
After this, we shook hands with our courteous host and with the music-master, and went away. Have I told all I saw ? Yes, I think I have told all I can tell ; but the impression of simple, quiet excellence, of tender sympathy, of unaffected confidence between children and master, who can rightly give ? In all this restless, selfish Paris, there was one spot where none sought his own, but bore his brother's burden ; where the strong helped the feeble, and sweetened life to suffering little bodies, lifting the crippled children's souls from weary earth to heaven.
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