Note 7 — Front matter (continued 4)

The "slide" system, which enabled a mother to deposit her child at the hospital without being seen by those within, ceased to be employed officially as far back as 1847; but the apparatus was long preserved intact, and I recollect seeing it in the latter years of the Second Empire, cir. 1867-70, when I was often at the artists' studios in the neighborhood. The aperture through which children were deposited in the sliding-box was close to the little door of which M. Zola speaks.—Trans.