Behind the “triumphal battery,” screened off by a sort of stone bastion, are the little gardens cultivated by the pensioners. Farther back is the principal façade of the hotel, three storeys high, and more than 200 metres wide, surmounted by a row of attics, and pierced with 133 windows. Projecting from the façade is a forepart enclosing a large arcade, of which the tympan represents Louis XIV. on horseback, accompanied by Justice and Prudence, two divinities to whom he did not always lend an ear. This group, the work of Couston, was maltreated by the Revolution, but restored by Cartellier. On the two sides of the entrance are the statues of Mars and Minerva, likewise by Couston. At the angles formed by the forepart and the façade are pedestals supporting four figures, in bronze, of chained nations, humbling themselves at the feet of the statue raised to Louis XIV. by Marshal de la Feuillade on the Place des Victoires and overthrown in 1792. These figures are executed by Desjardins. An adequate description of the interior of the Invalides would fill a small volume. Remarkable by its architecture, it is interesting by the military relics and trophies preserved in it. A subterranean crypt, beneath the celebrated “dome,” contains the tomb of Napoleon, whose remains were conveyed thither from St. Helena. [Illustration] [Illustration: LATUDE RECOGNISES D’ALIGRE AT CHARENTON. (_See p. 216._)] [Illustration: THE LAËNNEC HOSPITAL, RUE DE SÈVRES.] CHAPTER XXVIII. SOME MORE PARIS HOSPITALS. The French Hospital System--The Laënnec Hospital--The Houses of Assistance--The Quinze-Vingts--Deaf and Dumb Institutions--The Abbé de l’Épée--La Charité. The Hôtel des Invalides suggests the hospitals of Paris in general; and to the briefest possible glance at these--inasmuch as we have already given much space to the famous Hôtel Dieu--the present chapter may be devoted. “England” says Dr. Le Fort, “opens to the poor wretch without an asylum and without bread the doors of a workhouse; France those of a prison. To be without shelter is a misfortune in England; in France it is a crime. Unable to suppress poverty, our law will tolerate no manifestation of it. ‘Mendicity,’ as many a printed notice proclaims, is forbidden in the department of the Seine.” Dr. Le Fort maintains that the Paris poor are treated with too little sympathy by the Legislature, and seems to think that if their wants were more readily relieved, many an indigent invalid, whose health has gradually given way beneath hunger and destitution, would not have found his way into hospital.