The Bicêtre is a large, melancholy-looking building, half hospital half madhouse, situated a few leagues from Paris. I took a distaste to it on my very first visit. It always struck me as a sort of menagerie, I suppose from the circumstance of there having been pointed out to me, immediately on my entrance, a railed and fenced portion of the building, where the fiercer sort of inhabitants were imprisoned. Moreover, I met with such strange looks and grimaces; such bewildering side-glances or moping stares, as I traversed the open court-yards, with their open corridors, or the long arched passages of the interior, that the whole of the inmates came before me as creatures in human shape indeed, but as possessed by the cunning or the ferocity of the mere animal. Yet it was a public hospital, and in the performance of its duties there was an infinite deal of kindly attention, consummate skill, and unwearying labour. Its associations were certainly unhappy, and had, I am sure, a depressing effect upon at least the physically disordered patients. It may be that as the Bicêtre is a sort of forlorn hope of hospitals, where the more desperate or inexplicable cases only are admitted, it naturally acquires a sombre and ominous character; but in no establishment of a similar kind (and I have seen many) did I meet with such depressing influences.
Panpan was at first in high spirits at the change. He was to be restored to health in a brief period, and he really did in the first few weeks make rapid progress towards convalescence. Already a sort of gymnasium had been arranged over his bed, so that he might, by simple muscular exercises, regain his lost strength; and more than once I have guided his tottering steps along the arched corridors, as, clad in the gray uniform of the hospital, and supported by a stick, he took a brief mid-day promenade.
We made him cheering Sunday visits, Madame Panpan, Louis, the little Henri, and I, and infringed many a rule of the hospital in regard to his regimen. There was a charcutier living close to the outer walks, and when nothing else could be had, we purchased some of his curiously prepared delicacies, and smuggled them in under various guises. To him they were delicious morsels amid the uniform soup and bouillon of the hospital, and I dare say did him neither good nor harm.