Some Recollections of Mortality
I had parted from the small bird at somewhere about four o'clock in the morning, when he
had got out at Arras, and had been received by two shovel-hats in waiting at the station,
who presented an appropriately ornithological and crow-like appearance. My compatriot
and I had gone on to Paris; my compatriot enlightening me occasionally with a long list
of the enormous grievances of French railway travelling: every one of which, as I am a
sinner, was perfectly new to me, though I have as much experience of French railways as
most uncommercials. I had left him at the terminus (through his conviction, against all
explanation and remonstrance, that his baggage-ticket was his passenger-ticket), insisting
in a very high temper to the functionary on duty, that in his own personal identity he was
four packages weighing so many kilogrammes - as if he had been Cassim Baba! I had
bathed and breakfasted, and was strolling on the bright quays. The subject of my
meditations was the question whether it is positively in the essence and nature of things,
as a certain school of Britons would seem to think it, that a Capital must be ensnared and
enslaved before it can be made beautiful: when I lifted up my eyes and found that my
feet, straying like my mind, had brought me to Notre-Dame.
That is to say, Notre-Dame was before me, but there was a large open space between us.
A very little while gone, I had left that space covered with buildings densely crowded;
and now it was cleared for some new wonder in the way of public Street, Place, Garden,
Fountain, or all four. Only the obscene little Morgue, slinking on the brink of the river
and soon to come down, was left there, looking mortally ashamed of itself, and
supremely wicked. I had but glanced at this old acquaintance, when I beheld an airy
procession coming round in front of Notre-Dame, past the great hospital. It had
something of a Masaniello look, with fluttering striped curtains in the midst of it, and it
came dancing round the cathedral in the liveliest manner.
I was speculating on a marriage in Blouse-life, or a Christening, or some other domestic
festivity which I would see out, when I found, from the talk of a quick rush of Blouses
past me, that it was a Body coming to the Morgue. Having never before chanced upon
this initiation, I constituted myself a Blouse likewise, and ran into the Morgue with the
rest. It was a very muddy day, and we took in a quantity of mire with us, and the
procession coming in upon our heels brought a quantity more. The procession was in the
highest spirits, and consisted of idlers who had come with the curtained litter from its
starting-place, and of all the reinforcements it had picked up by the way. It set the litter
down in the midst of the Morgue, and then two Custodians proclaimed aloud that we
were all 'invited' to go out. This invitation was rendered the more pressing, if not the
more flattering, by our being shoved out, and the folding-gates being barred upon us.
Those who have never seen the Morgue, may see it perfectly, by presenting to themselves
on indifferently paved coach-house accessible from the street by a pair of folding-gates;
on the left of the coach-house, occupying its width, any large London tailor's or
linendraper's plate-glass window reaching to the ground; within the window, on two rows
of inclined plane, what the coach-house has to show; hanging above, like irregular
