the contents of their stomachs examined, and small portions of the body
found. The question then arose whether the child was born alive; pieces
of the lungs were placed in a basin of water, and the fact that they
floated on its surface proved, beyond a doubt, that the child had
breathed; the crime of infanticide was then charged upon the unhappy
mother, who, appalled by this evidence of her guilt, confessed.

In the gray of the dawn a watchful observer may behold the two extremes
of Paris life ominously hinted;--a cloaked figure stealthily dropping a
swathed effigy of humanity, just 'sent into this breathing world,' in
the rotary cradle of the asylum for _enfants trouvés_, and a cart full
of the corpses of the poor, driven into the yard of a hospital for
dissection.

Summoned one evening at dusk to the sick chamber of a countryman, I
realized the shadows of life in Paris. From the dazzling Boulevard the
cab soon wound through dim thoroughfares, up a deserted acclivity, to a
gloomy porch. A cold mist was falling, and I heard the bell sound
through a vaulted arch with desolate echoes. When the massive door
opened, a lamp suspended from a chain revealed a paved _entresol_ and
broad staircase; there was something prison-like even in the patrician
dimensions of the edifice; the light nickered at every gust. Ascending,
I pulled a _cordon bleu_, and was admitted into the apartment. It
consisted of four places or rooms, the furniture of which was in the
neatest French style, both of wood and tapestry; but the fireplace was
narrow, and so ill-constructed that while the heat ascended the chimney
the smoke entered the room. A nurse, with one of those keen,
self-possessed faces and that efficient manner so often encountered in
Paris, ushered me to the invalid's presence. He was a fair specimen of a
philosophic bachelor inured to the life of the French metropolis;