Having furnished her larder, Mme. Adam next volunteered to nurse the wounded, who were pouring into Paris. Her father’s lessons in anatomy, her grandfather’s lessons in the dressing of wounds, now stood her in good stead. She was appointed to install in the Conservatoire de Musique a private hospital with fifty beds. Henceforth the provisioning and equipping of this hospital and the others which she organised later became her chief concern. “I hold out my hand to every one; I beg, I write, I do everything to get money,” she says. It was a grand day when the hospital workers, well provided with bags, bottles and baskets, were permitted to penetrate into the Tuileries, now given back to the nation, and to replenish their stores from the imperial larder. Lists had been made out of the viands to which each hospital was entitled: macaroni for the Conservatoire de Musique, sausages for the Picpus Hospital, kidney beans for the Théâtre français, oil for the Grand Orient, jam for all. In connection with the Conservatoire Hospital, Mme. Adam organised a workroom where the wives, mothers and daughters of the men who were fighting, instead of staying at home and eating their hearts out with anxiety, could meet together, and, while sewing for the wounded, encourage one another and sympathise with one another’s sufferings. Edmond Adam was a member of the Government Committee appointed to investigate the condition of the general hospitals. This he found so lamentable, that in many instances, owing to the infection of wards and operating theatres, amputation cases had no chance of recovery. Despite the difficulties and dangers which beset her on every hand, Mme. Adam’s heart burned with a courage and a hope, which her friend, George Sand, appreciated to the full, when she wrote to her from Nohant on the 15th of September.[188] _“Vous êtes généreusement exaltée par un peril prochain et défini.”_ This was one of the last letters Mme. Adam received before the gates of Paris were closed. FOOTNOTES: [163] See _ante_, 99. [164] _Ibid._, 118. [165] _Souvenirs_, III. 349 _et seq._ [166] _Souvenirs_, III. 448. [167] _Souvenirs_, III. 464. [168] _Ibid._, 409. [169] _Ibid._, 470. [170] For Mme. Adam’s description of the grim incident which occurred at his funeral, see _Souvenirs_, V. 66. [171] Grant Duff in _Notes from a Diary_, September 1864. [172] _Souvenirs_, III. 471. [173] _Ibid._, 468. [174] _Ibid._, 471. [175] _Ibid._, 470. [176] _Ibid._, 473. [177] _Souvenirs_, IV. 2. [178] _Souvenirs_, IV. 7. [179] This diary, first published in _Le Rappel_, was afterwards embodied in the series of Mme. Adam’s _Souvenirs_, of which it constitutes the fourth volume, entitled _Mes Illusions et nos Souffrances pendant le siège de Paris_. [180] To Edmond de Goncourt (_Journal_ under September 4, 1870) the 4th of September seemed a “grey day.” Jules Favre, _Gouvernement de la Défense Nationale_, I. 64, writes, _“la journée ... se leva tiède et radieuse.”_