"'No, the Morgue does not give back what has been once deposited here. It allows the funeral ceremonies to be as pompous as they will, but they must all set out from hence; one end of the procession perhaps is at Notre Dame, while the other is starting from the Morgue. The Archbishop of Paris may be there; but François's place is fixed. It is the first.' "'And the priests of Notre Dame, do they never make any difficulty about administering the funeral rites to your dead?' "'Never!' "'Not even to the suicides?' "'There are no suicides for Notre Dame: one is drowned by accident, another killed by the bursting of a gun, a third has fallen from a scaffold. I invent the excuse, and the conscience of the priest accepts it. That's enough.' "So, thought I! Notre Dame, which formerly witnessed the execution at the stake of sorcerers, alchymists, and gipsies on the Grande Place, has now no word of reprobation for the carcass of the suicide, once allowed to rot on the ground, or be devoured by birds. She asks not here what was his faith. The priest says mildly, 'Peace be with you.' "We walked down, and François opened the first room, that which contains the dresses; habits of all shapes, all dimensions, hideously jumbled together; gaiters pinned to a sleeve, a shawl shading the neck of a coat; dresses of peasants, workmen, carters and brewers' frocks, women's gowns, all faded, discoloured, shapeless, flap against each other in the current of air which entered through the windows. There is something here appalling in the sight and sound of these objects, soulless, body-less, yet moving as if they had life, and presenting the form without the flesh. Your eye rests on a handkerchief, the property of some poor labourer, suddenly seized with the idea of suicide, after some day that he has wanted work. "François, who followed the direction of my eyes to see what impression the picture produced on me sighed heavily. "'Does it move you too,' said I? 'Are you discontented with your lot.--Unhappy?' "'Not exactly! But, Sir, formerly, you must know, the dresses, after being six months exhibited, became a perquisite of ours; we sold them. Now they talk of taking the dresses from us.' "I reassured François as to the intention of government, and assured him there was no talk of taking away the dresses. "The second room, that which adjoins the public exhibition room, is appropriated for the dissection of those, the mode of whose death appears to the police to be suspicious. Its only furniture is a marble table, on which the dissections take place, and a shelf on which are placed several bottles of chlorate. This room is immediately above the room of M. Perrin. The dissecting table above just answers to the girls' piano below.