At any
rate, they have reached the condition of semi-fossils.
One of these Parisian Melmoths had come within a few days into a
neighborhood of sober, quiet people, who, when the weather is fine,
are invariably to be found in the space which lies between the south
entrance of the Luxembourg and the north entrance of the Observatoire,
--a space without a name, the neutral space of Paris. There, Paris is
no longer; and there, Paris still lingers. The spot is a mingling of
street, square, boulevard, fortification, garden, avenue, high-road,
province, and metropolis; certainly, all of that is to be found there,
and yet the place is nothing of all that,--it is a desert. Around this
spot without a name stand the Foundling hospital, the Bourbe, the
Cochin hospital, the Capucines, the hospital La Rochefoucauld, the
Deaf and Dumb Asylum, the hospital of the Val-de-Grace; in short, all
the vices and all the misfortunes of Paris find their asylum there.
And (that nothing may lack in this philanthropic centre) Science there
studies the tides and longitudes, Monsieur de Chateaubriand has
erected the Marie-Therese Infirmary, and the Carmelites have founded a
convent. The great events of life are represented by bells which ring
incessantly through this desert,--for the mother giving birth, for the
babe that is born, for the vice that succumbs, for the toiler who
dies, for the virgin who prays, for the old man shaking with cold, for
genius self-deluded. And a few steps off is the cemetery of
Mont-Parnasse, where, hour after hour, the sorry funerals of the
faubourg Saint-Marceau wend their way.
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