Horrible Murder.—La Morgue.—Suicides.—Vanity.—Anecdote.—Influence of Modern Literature.—Different appearance of Poverty in France and England.

We have been made positively sick and miserable by the details of a murder, which seems to show that we live in a world where there are creatures ten thousand times more savage than any beast that ranges the forest,

This horror was perpetrated on the person of a wretched female, who appeared, by the mangled remains which were found in the river, to have been very young. But though thus much was discovered, it was many days ere, among the thousands who flocked to the Morgue to look at the severed head and mangled limbs, any one could be found to recognise the features. At length, however, the person with whom she had lodged came to see if she could trace any resemblance between her lost inmate and these wretched relics of a human being.

She so far succeeded as to convince herself of the identity; though her means of judging appeared to be so little satisfactory, that few placed any reliance upon her testimony. Nevertheless, she at length succeeded in having a man taken up, who had lived on intimate terms with the poor creature whose sudden disappearance had induced this woman to visit the Morgue when the description of this mangled body reached her. He immediately confessed the deed, in the spirit, though not in the words, of the poet:—

The peculiarly horrid manner in which the crime was committed, and the audacious style in which the criminal appears to brave justice, will, it is thought, prevent any extenuating circumstances being pleaded, as is usually done, for the purpose of commuting the punishment of death into imprisonment with enforced labour. It is generally expected that this atrocious murderer will be guillotined, notwithstanding the averseness of the government to capital punishment.

The circumstances are, indeed, hideous in all ways, and the more so from being mixed up with what is miscalled the tender passion. The cannibal fury which sets a man to kill his foe that he may eat him, has fully as much tenderness in it as this species of affection.

When "the passion is made up of nothing but the finest parts of love," it may, perhaps, deserve the epithet of tender; but we have heard of late of so many horrible and deliberate assassinations, originating in what newspapers are pleased to call "une grande passion" that the first idea which a love-story now suggests to me is, that the sequel will in all probability be murder "most foul, strange, and unnatural!"

Is there in any language a word that can raise so many shuddering sensations as "La Morgue?" Hatred, revenge, murder, are each terrible; but La Morgue outdoes them all in its power of bringing together in one syllable the abstract of whatever is most appalling in crime, poverty, despair, and death.

To the ghastly Morgue are conveyed the unowned dead of every description that are discovered in or near Paris. The Seine is the great receptacle which first receives the victims of assassination or despair; but they are not long permitted to elude the vigilance of the Parisian police: a huge net, stretched across the river at St. Cloud, receives and retains whatever the stream brings down; and anything that retains a trace of human form which is found amidst the product of the fearful draught is daily conveyed to La Morgue;—daily; for rarely does it chance that for four-and-twenty hours its melancholy biers remain unoccupied; often do eight, ten, a dozen corpses at a time arrive by the frightful caravan from "les filets de St. Cloud."

I have, in common with most people, I believe, a very strong propensity within me for seeing everything connected directly or indirectly with any subject or event which has strongly roused my curiosity, or interested my feelings; but, strange to say, I never feel its influence so irresistible as when something of shuddering horror is mixed with the spectacle. It is this propensity which has now induced me to visit this citadel of death;—this low and solitary roof, placed in the very centre of moving, living, laughing Paris.

No visit to a tomb, however solemn or however sad, can approach in thrilling horror to the sensation caused by passing the threshold of this charnel-house.

The tomb calls us to the contemplation of the common, the inevitable lot; but this gathering place of sin and death arouses thoughts of all that most outrages nature, and most foully violates the sanctuary of life, into which God has breathed his spirit. But I was steadfast in my will to visit it, and I have done it.

The building is a low, square, carefully-whited structure, situated on the Quai de la CitÉ. It is open to all; and it is fearful to think how many anxious hearts have entered, how many despairing ones have quitted it.

On entering I found myself in a sort of low hall which contained no object whatever. If I mistake not, there is a chamber on each side of it: but it was to the left hand that I was led, and it was thither that about a dozen persons who entered at the same time either followed or preceded me. I do not too well remember how I reached the place where the bodies are visible; but I know that I stood before one of three large windows, through the panes of which, and very near to them, lighted also by windows in the roof, are seen a range of biers, sloping towards the spectator at an angle that gives the countenance as well as the whole figure of the persons extended on them fully to view.

In this manner I saw the bodies of four men stretched out before me; but their aspect bore no resemblance to death—neither were they swollen or distorted in any way, but so discoloured as to give them exactly the appearance of bronze statues.

Two out of the four had evidently been murdered, for their heads and throats gave frightful evidence of the violence that had been practised upon them; the third was a mere boy, who probably met his fate by accident: but that the fourth was a suicide, it was hardly possible to doubt; even in death his features held the desperate expression that might best paint the state of mind likely to lead to such an act.

It was past mid-day when we entered the Morgue; but neither of the bodies had yet been claimed or recognised.

This spectacle naturally set me upon seeking information, wherever I was likely to find it, respecting the average number of bodies thus exposed within the year, the proportion of them believed to be suicides, and the causes generally supposed most influential in producing this dreadful termination.

I will not venture to repeat the result of these inquiries in figures, as I doubt if the information I received was of that strictly accurate kind which could justify my doing so; yet it was quite enough so, to excite both horror and astonishment at the extraordinary number which are calculated to perish annually at Paris by self-slaughter.

In many recent instances, the causes which have led to these desperate deeds have been ascertained by the written acknowledgment of the perpetrators themselves, left as a legacy to mankind. Such a legacy might perhaps not be wholly unprofitable to the survivors, were it not that the motives assigned, in almost every instance where they have been published, have been of so frivolous and contemptible a nature as to turn wholesome horror to most ill-placed mirth.

It can hardly be doubted, from the testimony of these singular documents, that many young Frenchmen perish yearly in this guilty and deplorable manner for no other reason in the world than the hope of being talked of afterwards.

Had some solitary instance of so perverted a vanity been found among these records, it might perhaps have been considered as no more incredible than various other proofs of the enfeebling effects of this paltry passion on the judgment, and have been set down to insanity, produced by excessive egotism: but nothing short of the posthumous testimony of the persons themselves could induce any one to believe that scarcely a week passes without such an event, from such a cause, taking place in Paris.

In many instances, I am told that the good sense of surviving friends has led them to disobey the testamentary instructions left by the infatuated young men who have thus acted, requesting that the wretched reasonings which have led them to it should be published. But, in a multitude of cases, the "Constitutionnel" and other journals of the same stamp have their columns filled with reasons why these poor reckless creatures have dared the distant justice of their Creator, in the hope that their unmeaning names should be echoed through Paris for a day.

It is not long since two young men—mere youths—entered a restaurant, and bespoke a dinner of unusual luxury and expense, and afterwards arrived punctually at the appointed hour to eat it. They did so, apparently with all the zest of youthful appetite and youthful glee. They called for champagne, and quaffed it hand in hand. No symptom of sadness, thought, or reflection of any kind was observed to mix with their mirth, which was loud, long, and unremitting. At last came the cafÉ noir, the cognac, and the bill: one of them was seen to point out the amount to the other, and then both burst out afresh into violent laughter. Having swallowed each his cup of coffee to the dregs, the garÇon was ordered to request the company of the restaurateur for a few minutes. He came immediately, expecting perhaps to receive his bill, minus some extra charge which the jocund but economical youths might deem exorbitant.

Instead of this, however, the elder of the two informed him that the dinner had been excellent, which was the more fortunate as it was decidedly the last that either of them should ever eat: that for his bill, he must of necessity excuse the payment of it, as in fact they neither of them possessed a single sous: that upon no other occasion would they thus have violated the customary etiquette between guest and landlord; but that finding this world, its toils and its troubles, unworthy of them, they had determined once more to enjoy a repast of which their poverty must for ever prevent the repetition, and then—take leave of existence for ever! For the first part of this resolution, he declared that it had, thanks to his cook and his cellar, been achieved nobly; and for the last, it would soon follow—for the cafÉ noir, besides the little glass of his admirable cognac, had been medicated with that which would speedily settle all their accounts for them.

The restaurateur was enraged. He believed no part of the rhodomontade but that which declared their inability to discharge the bill, and he talked loudly, in his turn, of putting them into the hands of the police. At length, however, upon their offering to give him their address, he was persuaded to let them depart.

On the following day, either the hope of obtaining his money, or some vague fear that they might have been in earnest in the wild tale that they had told him, induced this man to go to the address they had left with him; and he there heard that the two unhappy boys had been that morning found lying together hand in hand, on a bed hired a few weeks before by one of them. When they were discovered, they were already dead and quite cold.

On a small table in the room lay many written papers, all expressing aspirations after greatness that should cost neither labour nor care, a profound contempt for those who were satisfied to live by the sweat of their brow—sundry quotations from Victor Hugo, and a request that their names and the manner of their death might be transmitted to the newspapers.

Many are the cases recorded of young men, calling themselves dear friends, who have thus encouraged each other to make their final exit from life, if not with applause, at least with effect. And more numerous still are the tales recounted of young men and women found dead, and locked in each other's arms; fulfilling literally, and with most sad seriousness, the destiny sketched so merrily in the old song:—

I have heard it remarked by several individuals among those who are watching with no unphilosophical eyes many ominous features of the present time and the present race, or rather perhaps of that portion of the population which stand apart from the rest in dissolute idleness, that the worst of all its threatening indications is the reckless, hard indifference, and gladiator-like contempt of death, which is nurtured, taught, and lauded as at once the foundation and perfection of all human wisdom and of all human virtue.

In place of the firmness derived from hope and resignation, these unhappy sophists seek courage in desperation, and consolation in notoriety. With this key to the philosophy of the day, it is not difficult to read its influence on many a countenance that one meets among those who are lounging in listless laziness on the Boulevards or in the gardens of Paris.

The aspect of these figures is altogether unlike what we may too often see among those who linger, sunken, pale, and hopeless, on the benches of our parks, or loiter under porticos and colonnades, as if waiting for courage to beg. Hunger and intemperance often leave blended traces on such figures as these, exciting at once pity and disgust. I have encountered at Paris nothing like this: whether any such exist, I know not; but if they do, their beat is distant from the public walks and fashionable promenades. Instead of these, however, there is a race who seem to live there, less wretched perhaps in actual want of bread, but as evidently thriftless, homeless, and friendless as the other. On the faces of such, one may read a state of mind wholly different,—less degraded, but still more perverted;—a wild, bold eye, that rather seeks than turns from every passing glance—unshrinking hardihood, but founded more on indifference than endurance, and a scornful sneer for any who may suffer curiosity to conquer disgust, while they fix their eye for a moment upon a figure that looks in all ways as if got up to enact the hero of a melodrame. Were I the king, or the minister either, I should think it right to keep an eye of watchfulness upon all such picturesque individuals; for one might say most truly,

The friend to whom I addressed myself on the subject of these constantly-recurring suicides told me that there was great reason to believe that the increase of this crime, so remarkable during the last few years, might be almost wholly attributed to the "light literature," as it is called, of the period:—dark literature would be a fitter name for it.

The total absence of anything approaching to a virtuous principle of action in every fictitious character held up to admiration throughout all the tales and dramas of the dÉcousu school, while every hint of religion is banished as if it were treason to allude to it, is in truth quite enough to account for every species of depravity in those who make such characters their study and their model. "How oft and by how many shall they be laughed to scorn!"—yet believing all the while, poor souls! that they are producing a sensation, and that the eyes of Europe are fixed upon them, notwithstanding they once worked as a tailor or a tinker, or at some other such unpoetical handiwork; for they may all be described in the words of Ecclesiasticus, with a very slight alteration,—"They would maintain the state of the world, and all their desire is in (forgetting) the work of their craft."