--
Yet, replied the Baron, if they make twenty visits a day, they gain forty
livres--_"et c'est de quoi vivre."_ [It is a living.] It is undeniably
_de quoi vivre,_ but as long as a mere subsistence is the only prospect
of a physician, the French must be content to have their fevers cured by
"drastics, phlebotomy, and beef soup."
They tell me we have now more than five hundred detenus in this single
house. How so many have been wedged in I can scarcely conceive, but it
seems our keeper has the art of calculating with great nicety the space
requisite for a given number of bodies, and their being able to respire
freely is not his affair. Those who can afford it have their dinners,
with all the appurtenances, brought from the inns or traiteurs; and the
poor cook, sleep, and eat, by scores, in the same room. I have persuaded
my friend to sup as I do, upon tea; but our associates, for the most
part, finding it inconvenient to have suppers brought at night, and being
unwilling to submit to the same privations, regale themselves with the
remains of their dinner, re-cooked in their apartments, and thus go to
sleep, amidst the fumes of _perdrix a l'onion, oeufs a la tripe,_
[Partridge a l'onion--eggs a la tripe.] and all the produce of a French
kitchen.
It is not, as you may imagine, the Bourgeois, and less distinguished
prisoners only, who indulge in these highly-seasoned repasts, at the
expence of inhaling the savoury atmosphere they leave behind them: the
beaux and petites mistresses, among the ci-devant, have not less exigent
appetites, nor more delicate nerves; and the ragout is produced at night,
in spite of the odours and disorder that remain till the morrow.
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