Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

In 1792, three years after the outbreak of the Revolution, the different religious congregations were broken up, and the Hospital of La Charité was placed under the direction of the Municipality of Paris. The very title was abolished, and instead of Hôpital de la Charité – beautiful and suggestive name! – it was now called, without the least significance, Hôpital de l’Unité. Under the Restoration, however, its old name was given back to it; and since then, under many changes of government, it has retained its original appellation.

Among the other hospitals of Paris the most important are those of La Pitié and of St. Louis, to which may be added L’Hôpital du Midi, and a number of special hospitals, such as the one known as La Maternité, founded in 1795, which is at once a school for the instruction of wet-nurses, and a maison d’accouchement, or lying-in hospital.

CHAPTER XXIX.
LUNATIC ASYLUMS AND MIXED INSTITUTIONS

The Treatment of Lunacy in the Past – La Salpêtrière – Bicêtre – The Story of Latude – The Four Sergeants of La Rochelle – Pinel’s Reforms – Charenton

OUR description of the hospitals and asylums of Paris would be scarcely complete without some mention of the public madhouses. In pre-revolutionary Paris no special establishment for the treatment of the insane existed. Strange as it may seem, there were no lunatic asylums in France until the beginning of this century; nor until 1838 was any such institution formally recognised by law. We have not far to go back to find the demented treated as criminals, or exorcised as demoniacs, or put to death as magicians and sorcerers. Mr. H. C. Burdett, who has recently published a work on the hospitals and asylums of the world, divides the history of lunatics and their treatment into four periods.

I. An early period when, at the beginning of the Christian era, the insane were brought together and placed under intelligent control. – In this connection Mr. Burdett cites the rules given for the treatment of lunatics by Aretæus (A.D. 80) and Soranus (A.D. 95). The latter, in particular, gave directions of great minuteness as to the temperature and furniture of the rooms, the arrangements of the bed, the physical and mental exercises to which the patients afflicted with dementia were to be subjected. The superintendents, according to the rules of this period, were to have strict instructions to repress the errors of the patients in such a way as not to exasperate them by too much sharpness, and yet not permit them, by too much weakness, to increase their unreasonable demands. Subsequent writers deal with insanity in a like spirit of enlightenment down to Paulus Ægineta (A.D. 650).

II. The period of slaughter. – In the Middle Ages the treatment of lunatics was worthy only of the ages characterised as dark. A madman was worse treated than a mad dog. For twelve centuries lunatics were commonly put to death, and in most cases by burning at the stake. In France alone twenty thousand are said to have been burnt in a hundred years; and the same thing went on in every other country. Those who were not burnt wandered at large in a wretched condition, to die at last from exposure; or they were confined in dungeons, starved and cruelly maltreated. Ambrose Paré, the celebrated French surgeon, medical attendant of Francis I., fully believed that lunatics were possessed by the devil. “They may often be seen,” he says, “to change into goats, asses, dogs, wolves, crows, and frogs; they cause thunder and lightning, lift castles into the air, and fascinate the eye.” King Louis XIV. has been much reproached since his death as he was adulated during his lifetime. To him, in any case, is due the first movement against the cruel – the absolutely insane treatment of the insane. In 1670 a trial took place in Normandy which ended in the condemnation of seventeen people to the stake, either as lunatics or as sorcerers. A rat, it was sworn, had been seen talking to a child; and on the strength of this evidence everyone who could be brought into connection with the strange incident was sentenced to death. The king was indignant, and soon afterwards a decree was published forbidding trials of the kind in future.

III. The period of torture. – Though no longer subject to death punishment by fire, lunatics were almost as badly off in the eighteenth and at the beginning of the nineteenth century as at an earlier time. Such asylums as existed in France and other countries up to the present century were entirely of a monastic kind; and it was not, as before mentioned, until the reign of Louis Philippe that any regular secular institution for the treatment of the insane was founded. The unhappy lunatics were probably happiest in those countries where least notice was taken of them; for not a century ago they were liable, when “cared for,” to copious bleeding, shower-baths, sudden frights, and rigid coercion. In some places they were chained and flogged at the changes of the moon, or they were placed under the charge of criminals, who set dogs on them and tortured them to death. The doctors, instead of checking these barbarities, encouraged them; and from time to time invented new ones. They it was who introduced the “circular swing” and “bath of surprise.” One torture, diabolically devised, was to lower the patient into a well, chain him there, and allow the water to rise gradually to his mouth in order to give a shock to his nerves. An unhappy man named Norris was in England, at the so-called Hospital of Bethlem, fixed to the wall by the neck and waist so that he could not move a foot or raise his arms; and, thus attached, he remained for twelve years.

“At an epoch not far distant from our own,” says Dr. Linas in a paper on lunatic asylums in France, “demented persons were, with the exception of those who found an asylum in the monasteries, treated as vagabonds and even criminals.”

The first attempts to improve the condition of the unhappy lunatic were made by Dr. Tenon, and by a member of the Constituent Assembly, M. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, in 1791. A year later Pinel, equally estimable for his philanthropic and for his scientific spirit, introduced at Bicêtre the reforms which, in common with the two excellent men before named, he had long been meditating. For the First Revolution, then, with all its mad excesses, must be claimed the honour of having introduced in modern times the humane treatment of the insane. The Revolution, indeed, opened not only a “career to talent,” but a path to very useful reform. The mad patients were now taken from the Hôtel Dieu and other hospitals to be placed at Charenton, Bicêtre, and La Salpêtrière (1802-1807). From that time these asylums, placed under the direction of eminent medical men, changed their character. The employment of force or coercion with lunacy was at an end; and the new establishments, thanks to the intelligence and zeal of Esquirol, Ferrus, and their disciples, gained the highest reputation throughout Europe. The study of mental maladies was now for the first time followed.

It was not, however, until 1838 that Charenton became a lunatic asylum and nothing else. Bicêtre and La Salpêtrière remained hybrid institutions, half hospitals, half asylums; receptacles alike for madness and old age. The inmates of Charenton are treated with the greatest kindness. Cases of insubordination must of course be dealt with; and they are treated by the withdrawal of some favour or (less humanely, as it would seem to the lay reader) by the shower-bath. A strait-jacket, with long sewn-up sleeves, is the only means of coercion employed with violent and dangerous madmen, so as to preserve them against the excesses of their own fury and to render it impossible for them to injure their companions. The wards of the unruly patients – broad and lofty, well lighted, well ventilated, with waxed floors – present no resemblance whatever to the cages of former days.

All patients without exception, peaceful or unruly, are in the enjoyment of fresh air, sunlight, space, and as much liberty as can be prudently allowed them. They correspond with their relatives and receive visits from their family and their friends. Once a month they are officially visited by a magistrate, whose duty it is to question them and listen to their complaints. For the men there are workshops of all kinds, for the women workrooms. The dormitories are well kept, the dining rooms are exquisitely clean, and for the recreation of the patients there are billiard rooms, drawing rooms, and libraries. Music, too, and drawing may be cultivated. During the summer there are excursions to the country, during the winter evening parties, concerts, and dramatic representations. Among the inmates persons of every age, every rank, and every profession are to be found: some of them monomaniacs, harmless dreamers after an impossible chimera or vain hope; or it may be obstinately attached to some wild idea which they cannot refer to without expressions of violence. The liberal professions are largely represented at Charenton, and, due numerical proportion being observed, furnish more lunatics than any other class. “Paris,” says Dr. Linas, “the great rendezvous of every kind of ambition, every kind of vanity, every presumption, every passion, every pleasure, and every form of misery, furnishes a larger contingent than any other part of France.” While the proportion of lunatics for the other departments is one to from 1,500 to 2,000 inhabitants, it is in the ratio of one to 500 for the department of the Seine. In 1801 this department had 946 lunatics to support, in 1845 2,595, in 1851 3,060, and in 1865 4,388. Happily, however, largely as the numbers will be seen to have swelled, a great many cures are yearly effected. In the year last-named 389 patients (154 men and 224 women) were discharged sane from Bicêtre and the Salpêtrière.

There are two modes of admission to these asylums. The Prefect of the Seine authorises the admission of harmless patients on the demand of those patients’ friends; but lunatics who are considered dangerous to the community – and these form by far the greater proportion – are shut up by order of the Prefect of Police.

Let us take a leisurely glance at the two great French lunatic asylums. To begin with La Salpêtrière. It is situated on the 13th arrondissement, almost at the entrance to the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, and not far from the Jardin des Plantes and the Bridge of Austerlitz. On the pediment of its portal is this inscription: “Hospital for old age – Women.” Such has been the official title of the institution since 1823, but the more ancient and popular name, that of La Salpêtrière, has prevailed in common use.

At the spot which is occupied by this madhouse there stood in the reign of Louis XIII. a little arsenal called La Salpêtrière, on account of the saltpetre which was made within its walls. In 1656 appeared an edict of Louis XIV. ordering the establishment at this point of a general hospital for the “poor mendicants of the town and suburbs of Paris.” Thanks to the royal munificence, to the liberality and generous co-operation of Cardinal Mazarin, of the Duchess d’Aiguillon, and several notable citizens, to the pious zeal of Vincent de Paul, and to the active direction of the architects Levau, Bruant, Duval, and Le Muet, the various buildings of the arsenal were happily converted into a retreat for the poor, two new blocks, those of Mazarin and St. Claire, being added to the original structures. From the 7th to the 13th of May, 1657, the hospital opened its doors to 628 poor women, blind, mad, and imbecile, infirm, invalid, deaf, or otherwise afflicted, as well as to 192 children of from two to seven years of age, who, born in many cases out of wedlock, had been exposed and abandoned.

In 1669 the church was built by the king’s orders. Towards 1684 was constructed in the centre of the hospital the prison of La Force, where women of irregular life were incarcerated. In 1756 the Marchioness de Lassay caused to be constructed at her own expense the superb building which bears her name, and which forms a pendant to that of Mazarin.

At the period last mentioned La Salpêtrière still contained, as at its origin, the most strangely mixed population that could be conceived. At the end of the last century, and more particularly at the beginning of the present, efforts were made to transform this “frightful sewer,” as Camus called it. From 1801 to 1804 La Force was evacuated. Its feminine inhabitants transferred to Lourcine, the children went to the Orphelins; the insane were separated from the infirm and placed in a special quarter. From 1815 to 1823, in virtue of a very strong report drawn up by M. de Pastoret, the dungeons of La Salpêtrière were destroyed, the sanitation improved, the dormitories enlarged and well ventilated, the furniture renewed, and the diet improved. Finally, as if to efface all memory of the past, the asylum received the name of Hospital for Old Age. Other subsequent ameliorations, notably those effected in 1836, 1845, 1848, and 1851, have contributed to render La Salpêtrière what it certainly is in the present day – the finest institution of the kind in France.

The total population of the establishment is no less than 5,000, comprising as it does some 800 employés, 1,500 lunatics, and nearly 3,600 patients, old or infirm. The annual expenses amount to nearly two million francs. Within the precincts of La Salpêtrière the visitor might fancy himself in a small town. There is a church, a letter box, a tobacco shop, a butcher’s shop, warehouses, wash-houses, and a market, or rather bazaar, where all sorts of goods are retailed, such as fruit, vegetables, sweetmeats, and pastry; there are streets named after the establishments to which they lead – Laundry Street, Kitchen Street, Church Street, and so on; there are large promenades and pretty gardens, together with courts, squares, and “places” bearing the illustrious name of a founder, a benefactress, a physician, or a saint immortalised by charity.

This vast community of indigence and madness is under the control of the general administration of Public Assistance. The local management is in the hands of a director, assisted by a steward and eleven clerks. The medical officers are seven in number, five for the insane and two for the infirm; not to mention a surgeon, a dispensing chemist, and other medical assistants. The religious services are conducted according both to the Catholic and the Protestant ritual. The staff of female attendants is divided up into superintendents, under-superintendents, household servants, etc. The superintendents and under-superintendents wear a black uniform, severe but in good taste. They are women carefully chosen, able, devoted, of tried zeal, benevolent character, and not infrequently of mental culture.

Before the principal entrance to La Salpêtrière, looking towards the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, is a more or less triangular open space, which, almost deserted during five days of the week, is animated and noisy like a fair every Thursday and Sunday between the hours of twelve and four; for the public is then admitted to see the inmates, and the wandering dealers have assembled in order to sell presents for the unfortunate patients. The two porters of the establishment have on these days enough to do, since the number of visitors averages from 1,200 to 3,000.

Before entering the hospital the church is worthy of observation. Louis XIV. ordered it to be built in December, 1669, and it was constructed by the celebrated architect, Levau. It is of octagonal form, and like the ancient basilicas, of which the model is preserved by the Greek Church in Russia and elsewhere, it is surmounted by five cupolas: a central one, beneath which stands the high altar, and four lateral ones covering an equal number of chapels.

Under the portico are two allegorical groups by the famous sculptor, Etex. The interior of the church is adorned with ancient organs, statues of Christ and of the twelve apostles, and a number of pictures belonging to the eighteenth century, some of which should not hastily be passed by. Every Sunday nearly three hundred demented women assist with the greatest devotion at the celebration of mass. On the buildings and wings to the right and left of the church are engraved the names of the most illustrious and most generous benefactors of the Salpêtrière: Mazarin, Bellièvre, Fouquet, and Lassay.

Administratively and medically the Salpêtrière is divided into five compartments, which are subdivided into quarters or sections. The old people, the incurables, the infirm, form three separate classes. The principal wards bear the names of Mazarin, Lassay, St. Jacques, St. Léon, and Ste. Claire. There are smaller wards which are dedicated to the Virgin, to St. Vincent de Paul, the guardian angel, and St. Magdalen.

The patients are allowed three meals a day: between seven and eight a breakfast of bread and milk; between eleven and twelve, soup and boiled beef; between four and five, a plate of vegetables and then dessert. Those who are well enough, to the number of 850, take their meals in the refectory; the others, upwards of 1,700, are served in the dormitories. The annual mortality among the indigent inmates averages 23 per cent. At the time Dr. Linas wrote his paper on La Salpêtrière there were several examples of longevity in the institution, including a certain Madame Mercier, who was well and lively at 104.

The department which occupies the southern extremity of La Salpêtrière is the one specially devoted to lunatics. Placed at the head of the establishment in 1795, Pinel introduced at this hospital the same beneficent reforms with which he had already endowed Bicêtre. He at once did away with the chains, fetters, and irons with which, until his time, the patients were loaded, and he filled up the subterranean dungeons in which unhappy women, half naked, had often had their feet gnawed by rats, or frozen by the cold of winter. From 1818 to 1836 Esquirol, pupil, disciple, and friend of Pinel, introduced new modifications to soften the lot of the deranged.

Connected with La Salpêtrière are many interesting traditions. During its earliest days St. Vincent de Paul ministered constantly to the patients. Here Bossuet, on the 29th of June, 1657, pronounced his panegyric on St. Paul, one of the masterpieces of Christian eloquence. Here was confined in 1788 the mysterious personage calling herself Madame de Donhault, whose identity has never been established, and who is known in judicial annals as the “WOMAN WITHOUT A NAME,” or “THE SHAM MARCHIONESS.” Here, too, was shut up the widow and accomplice of the famous poisoner, Desrues, massacred with thirty-five other prisoners on the 4th of September, 1792. Two other women who played in the world two very different parts died at La Salpêtrière: Théroigne de Méricourt, at the age of fifty-seven, after eighteen years of wild illusions, and Mdlle. Quino.

The Salpêtrière has been the cradle of important physical and psychological studies in connection with brain diseases. These have sometimes taken a slightly fantastic form, as when Esquirol and his nephew, Dr. Miture, endeavoured to cure madness by the most agreeable remedies – the former prescribing music, the latter champagne. Rostan and Georget in 1822 made at La Salpêtrière experiments in animal magnetism, which attracted much attention in the scientific world, especially as regards two subjects, now well known in the history of somnabulism: the young Petronilla, and the widow Brouillard, nicknamed Braquette, whose clairvoyance was some years later put to a delicate test by three mischievous house surgeons, MM. Dechambre, Diday, and Debrou. A number of interesting and very important experiments in the new science (or old science under a new name) of hypnotism have been made by Charcot and his pupils at this institution. Here, too, a close examination and analysis of the cerebral manifestations of the insane led some subtle anatomist to the conclusion that genius was but a form of insanity. There was one physician of La Salpêtrière, M. Lélut, member of the Chamber of Deputies, and of the Institute, who, in two remarkable works, endeavoured to prove that in the minds of Socrates and of Pascal there was, at least, a touch of madness. Another learned physician, attached during the Louis Philippe period to the Salpêtrière, M. Trélat – described by Dr. Linas as “an excellent man, ex-minister, and not a member of the Legion of Honour” – wrote a book, which may be classed with the one just named, on “Lucid Madness.”

Bicêtre, an asylum of the same character as La Salpêtrière, derives its name from the familiar Winchester. On the site of Bicêtre, in the year of grace 1284, Jean de Pontoise, Bishop of Winchester, built near Paris a manor house, which, after the name of his see, he called Winchester, soon corrupted into Wicester, which, by a further process of corruption, became successively Bicestre and Bicêtre. After going through various hands, and at last passing into the king’s possession, Bicêtre was given in 1656 by Louis XIV. to be turned into a hospital for old men above the age of seventy, lame and incurable children, the blind, the paralytic, the imbecile, and the epileptic, together with women of dissolute life, who were to be received only on condition of being corrected, whipped, and fed on bread and water.

At the period of the Revolution Bicêtre was at once a hospital, an asylum, a prison, and a house of correction, until, in 1791, it became at the same time a madhouse. The lunatics were at first mixed up with the criminals, or confined in horrible dungeons, but at length the intelligent and benevolent Pinel broke their chains. It was only in 1812, however, that the lunatics were placed in a special compartment, separate at once from the criminals and from the patients. Bicêtre continued to be a prison until 1836, when it became simply a hospital. At present the dungeons of former days are used as store-rooms for provisions and drugs.

Bicêtre is a little beyond the fortifications on the road to Fontainebleau. An avenue, lined with eating houses and taverns, so plentiful at all the Barriers, leads to the principal entrance, which is surmounted by a royal escutcheon with this inscription, “Hospice de la Vieillesse – Hommes.” It is inhabited by some 3,000 persons, comprising more than four hundred officials and servants, upwards of 1,500 indigent persons, between fifty and sixty convalescents, 1,830 adult lunatics, and 120 epileptic and idiotic children. The annual cost of the establishment amounts to one million and a half francs.

Bicêtre, like the Salpêtrière, is divided into departments: the Hospice on the north, where the aged and infirm of the city of Paris are gratuitously received; and the Asile, on the south, intended for the lunatics of the Department of the Seine. Like the Salpêtrière, it has more the character of a town than of a single building. Without any pretension to architecture, Bicêtre is composed of wings, outgrowths, and “annexes” of various kinds, added and super-added to the original and central structure. The shops attached to the establishment are now limited to a grocer’s and a tobacconist’s. There was formerly a shop for the sale of alcoholic drinks; but the intemperance of the customers caused the administration to banish for ever its estimable proprietor. For similar reasons the strictest regulations have been affixed to the door of the still-existing canteen.

The canteen occupies the superb cellar of the ancient manor house: an immense crypt, admirably constructed and supported by a double rank of robust pilasters. It was formerly the Eldorado of the inhabitants of Bicêtre. Officials, servants, visitors, were in the canteen from morning till night, giving themselves up to libations of Rabelaisian magnitude; so much so that this, pauper-tavern brought in, one year with another, a clear profit of 50,000 francs. To put a stop to these abuses, both in the interest of morality and of health, the administration of La Salpêtrière, instead of letting out the canteen to enterprising speculators, assumed the entire direction of it, and introduced stringent regulations, by which the canteen is only open for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening. No one, moreover, must enter it more than once in twenty-four hours, when the order must be limited to thirty centilitres (about ⅓ of a quart) of wine, or five centilitres of brandy. Complaints, threats, and even partial revolt were the consequences of this severe edict; but it had to be observed.

For the rest, the inhabitants of Bicêtre, if they are really thirsty, have excellent water within reach. The great well, said to be the finest in the world, is one of the curiosities of the place. The depth of the well is equal to the height of the towers of Notre Dame. Its walls are faced with masonry to a depth of some 150 feet, and the bottom is reached by a staircase of 220 steps. The mouth is enclosed by an immense cage, intended to preserve the beholder from the vertiginous attractions of its depth. The three pumps connected with the well used formerly to be worked day and night by prisoners, and, when they were tired out, by lunatics. For the last thirty years, however, the pumping has been done by a steam engine. The water is discharged into an immense reservoir, which received the major part of its contents from the well, and the remainder from the Seine.

Close to the great well are the workshops, where, among other products, some seven thousand pairs of boots and shoes are turned out every year. All the able-bodied inmates must do work of some kind, for which they are remunerated at the rate of from ten to seventy centimes a day.

The library, founded in 1860, contains 2,500 volumes, and is open twice a day.

The inmates of Bicêtre come from all classes: workmen, soldiers, servants, artists, writers, professors, inventors, shopkeepers, government clerks – whom imprudence, misconduct, or misfortune has reduced to poverty. This mixed population is said to be difficult to rule, and in former days it frequently showed insubordination, and even rose in insurrection against the officials of the place. The rising of 1837 was caused by the limitations in connection with drink, already mentioned; that of 1841 by the suppression of the right to dine alone; that of 1848 by the abolition of liberty to go out every day at any hour without permission. To prevent the return of any such disturbances an administrative order was issued in 1850, instituting the following penalties against particular offences: stoppage of wine, withdrawal of leave to go out, imprisonment and expulsion from the asylum. It may be seen from the above that it is not alone in the mad division of the hospital that lunatics are to be found.

The lunatic department at Bicêtre is divided into three sections; the first and second being assigned to adult lunatics, the third to epileptics and idiots. The study in which peaceable lunatics assemble to read, write, or draw is interesting, if only for the objects of art which adorn it: busts, statues, water-colours, engravings, sepias, and pen-and-ink drawings, some by unknown artists, others by artists of celebrity – many of them inmates, for a while, at least, of the asylum. In the time of Dr. Linas (some twenty years ago) there was a painter in the lunatic wards of Bicêtre, a former priest, known in the house as “Monsieur L’Abbé,” who, if he had not gone mad, would, in the opinion of Dr. Linas, have earned renown. “Nothing,” says the doctor, “is more curious than his symbolical picture of ‘Life’: a vast composition, in which are represented, with wonderful harmony of ensemble, and a prodigious fecundity of detail, all the splendour and all the misery, all the heights and all the depths, all the virtues and all the vices, all the grandeurs and all the infamies, all the beauty and all the turpitude, of human existence from the cradle to the grave.”

The ward for epileptic and idiotic children is the saddest of all, by its arrangement and general exterior, as well as by the condition of the patients. These are well cared for. Unhappy creatures, who were formerly regarded as the dregs of humanity, are now made the object of the most devoted solicitude. Two physicians, of heart as well as of talent, were the first to show that idiocy has its degrees, and is not absolutely refractory to intellectual culture. At their suggestion a school for idiots was instituted at Bicêtre in 1842, and since then untiring endeavour has been made to further their education. They are taught to speak, to read, to sing. Their irregular attitudes and gestures are corrected, and their muscular system is developed by marching, running, dancing, fencing, digging, and gymnastics of every kind. Their senses are directed, their bad instincts reformed, and in time, according to their aptitude, they are made cobblers, carpenters, and so on. Many children admitted as idiots leave the asylum every year to exercise these trades, and live by their work.

Criminal lunatics, condemned by a verdict, or dangerous ones, certified as such, are kept apart in a building called La Sureté. Within this sinister rotunda the patients are kept in cells, and subjected night and day to the strictest surveillance. The ordinary occupation of these dangerous lunatics is the harmless one of cutting out artificial flowers. Their occasional fits of violence are dealt with only by the application of the strait-jacket.

Many of the officials at Bicêtre look upon the place not only as a home, but as a native land. Born at Bicêtre of parents who were preceded at the same institution by their own parents, the functionaries form a sort of official dynasty. Bicêtre has had its celebrities, its dramas, its memorable events. In legendary times the hill-side of Gentilly was haunted by Wehr-wolves, and the wizards of the neighbourhood held sabbath there. Interesting anecdotes have been told about the captivity of Salomon de Caux in the dungeons of Bicêtre, and the visit of Marion Delorme to the inventor, supposed by many of his countrymen to have constructed the first steam engine. At the time, however, of Salomon de Caux (1580-1630) Bicêtre was a magnificent country house, and neither a prison nor an asylum. It is certain, on the other hand, that this establishment has reckoned among its prisoners or its patients Latude, the unhappy victim of the hatred of Mme. de Pompadour, who, after escaping three times from Vincennes and the Bastille, was three times re-arrested, and finally delivered, after thirty-five years of captivity, by the courageous perseverance of Mme. Legros.