Madame Charrier makes her appearance and goes the rounds, accompanied by the élèves, each one giving a short report of the patients under her care. It is a funny group: fifty women or more of all ages, wide awake from the hurry of their duties, but dressed mostly in haste with little white caps, coloured handkerchiefs, and the coarser ones in short bed-gowns, their faces browned by the sun, their hands red with hard work, but all good-tempered, with a kind word always ready, and their black eyes sparkling with life. We pass through the Salles Sainte-Marguerite, Sainte-Elisabeth, Sainte-Anne, visiting each patient in her alcove—it is seven when we finish. I hasten back to my dortoir, make my bed, &c., fetch my coffee, which I procure for two sous a morning from the superintendent of the infirmary, eat it hastily with my bread, which is always supplied for the day at noon, and then hurry off to the Salles Sainte-Marie and Sainte-Marthe, where the more sick patients are placed, whom the attending physicians visit every morning at eight. At this visit are present M. Girardin, the chief physician, a tall, dry, grey-haired man, full of pomposity; the interne, M. Blot, a very handsome, somewhat dignified young physician, with, I fancy, rather a cross temper; Madame Charrier, the aide-sage-femme, and as many of the élèves as choose to be present. This over, I make some independent visits to cases which interest me, to the nursery, &c., and try to pick up a little here and there; then I return to the dortoir and read or write a little. Afterwards I join the class instruction in the wood, a preparatory lesson which the elder élèves give to the younger ones, and which I attend for the sake of the French. It is a very pretty method of instruction: the young teacher seated on the grass, all the pupils grouped around under the thick shade of some fine tree, the atmosphere being of an elastic purity which is truly charming. The French
