“PAS DE CHANCE!”

The dissecting room in the old Hôtel Dieu, in Paris, which was torn down in the year 1877, was a strange and gruesome place. To reach it, one was obliged to go upstairs and down, past the wards occupied by the sick, through spacious, lofty vestibules, echoing corridors paved with tiles, turning now to the right, now to the left, and across covered wooden bridges, spanning the little arm of the Seine which flowed between the two buildings of the hospital, and, after a walk of many minutes, finally descend into the spacious subterranean chambers, which were the most ancient portion of a structure erected many centuries ago, and dating from the early part of the Middle Ages. On reaching the foot of the worn stone steps leading to the dissecting room, one found one’s self in a narrow, unpaved outer cellar, lighted by a grated window above, and containing at one end a low, rusty iron door as broad as it was high. A person familiar with the place opened this door by turning a rude handle in the center, which moved a heavy, creaking double-bolt inside, and entered a low vaulted chamber about fifteen paces long and ten wide, which was very insufficiently lighted by two square grated windows, which pierced the thick wall directly under the vaulted ceiling, and which could be opened only when the Seine was low. The cellars of the Hôtel Dieu were below the surface of the river, from which it was separated by its strong walls, overgrown with moss and blackened by age, and when it rose ever so little, one could look from the lower portions of the windows of the dissecting-room several inches into the turbid waves of the river. Usually several gaslights burned here, filling the place with a bright glare, in which human beings and all objects assumed unpleasantly sharp outlines and a livid, disagreeable color, while dark shadows, like silhouettes, were thrown upon the floor and walls. But it was a fitting illumination of the place and its contents. The blackish-gray walls were always covered with a clammy moisture, which, on the side facing the river, gathered here and there into thick drops, that slowly, gradually trickled down on the slippery, dirty marble floor, and suggested, even to the observer least susceptible to sentimental fancies, the sorrowful impression of tears, held back by a strong will, yet slowly oozing forth. On the windowless side of the room was a wash basin set in the wall, supplied with a faucet and waste pipe. Several pieces of soap lay on it, and, upon a nail at the side, hung towels of doubtful cleanliness, and a dilapidated yellow tablet which contained, in faded letters, the rules of the dissecting room. On the opposite side six tables were ranged in a row, above each of which a gas jet descended from the ceiling; the first, of the usual shape, held a pair of scales and a number of rusty weights. The brass balances, soiled with horrible fat and blood stains, showed the purpose for which they were used—the weighing of diseased portions of the human body. The form of the other five was peculiar. The top was long, narrow, slightly concave, like a trough covered with tin, a little inclined, wider at the upper end than at the lower, where it was perforated by a hole leading into a metal pipe, which discharged its contents into a tin pail standing under the narrow end of the table. These were the dissecting tables, “Morgagni’s tables,” as we used to call them in our technical jargon. Upon them, surrounded by knives, scissors, chisels and hammers of singular form, lay cold, rigid human forms, in which the disciples of science searched with sacred curiosity to surprise, in the mysterious depths of the organs, the secret of life. On the wall at the head of each table hung a little blackboard, on which was fastened a label bearing the name, age, and date of death of the body beneath. At the back of the dissecting room was a glass door, opening into an adjoining chamber, much smaller and lighted only by a single window. Two laths, painted black, formed a cross extending from the floor to the ceiling on the side wall, and several roughly-made coffins stood on the floor, which was thickly covered with aromatic pine shavings. This was the death chamber. After dissection the bodies were brought here, wrapped in a linen sheet supplied by the hospital, and laid in the coffin to await burial. If within the next twelve hours relatives came to claim the body, it was delivered to them; if not, it was conveyed the following morning in the hearse to the overseer of the poor, and buried in the paupers’ ground in the cemetery of Père la Chaise. The only living creature in these uncanny rooms, during the time when no dissections were being made, was a beautiful white cat, which sprang gaily to meet every one who entered and, mewing and purring, pressed and twisted around him, and the master of the affectionate creature, a little, thin, one-eyed old man, who coughed continually and had lived here thirty years, yet in the midst of the scene of constant sorrow and destruction, in which he worked, maintained so cheerful a spirit that he was always humming a gay little song while preparing the bodies for dissection, or washing, sewing them up, and wrapping them in sheets after it. He assumed a serious, nay, even melancholy mien, only when the relatives of any corpse came to carry away their dead, for during the many years of his sorrowful occupation, the worthy man had retained sufficient courtesy and consideration not to wound the feelings of the mourners by displaying a face of business-like indifference or of cheerfulness.

Most of the physicians and students who visited the Hôtel Dieu were in the habit, at the close of the morning call, of going down to the dissecting room to see “what there was new.” In the same way the habitué of the theater, after witnessing the performance, goes on the stage to cast a glance behind the scenes. One morning in May, 1877, following this custom, I entered the subterranean chamber just described. The cat was sitting in the corner, washing her fur, old Jean was busy with some empty coffins in the death chamber, one of the dissecting tables was empty, while on the other four lay subjects. Around the first body, that of a strong old man, who had died of a brain disease, stood a group of young people, some with white aprons and blood-stained hands, others with hats on their heads, gloved hands, and cigars in their mouths, eagerly discussing the ravages which the knife had just disclosed, and the phenomena caused during the progress of the illness. At the second and third tables the work was already done. A hasty glance at the cruelly emaciated bodies and the organs on the table sufficed to reveal the cause of death. “Consumption!” It is so common a disease, the ravages it produces in the organism are so often seen, that people do not linger over it. So I passed on without delay to the fifth table, the last in the row, and perceived that it contained a corpse still undisturbed, the sight of which instantly filled me with sympathy. It was the body of a woman, very young, and of remarkable beauty, whom death must have snatched away in the midst of health. No long sickness could have preceded it, for the outlines of the form were full, round, almost sensuous; illness had had no time to caricature the noble lines of the figure by the ugly angles of emaciation. The skin, in spite of the horrible chill which it sent through the whole frame to the heart at the lightest touch of the finger-tips, was as smooth and fine as velvet, and the hue so dazzlingly white that it had the iridescent tints of mother-of-pearl. The features of the oval face had assumed, in the last agony, an expression of suffering which death had stereotyped. The lips were slightly parted, revealing teeth which resembled transparent white enamel. The dark eyes were wide open, and the dull, glassy pupils gazed at me with the leaden stare of a corpse. The shining black hair was gathered at the back of the head into a knot held by several pins, which were half slipping out, and a few waving locks still rested lightly on the smooth brow, as an unsuspecting little child plays happily around its dead mother. The shadows of death shrouding the beautiful form had not wholly effaced the bloom of youth. As it lay in its chaste, pure, classic loveliness, one might believe that he had before him a Greek statue carved from Parian marble. To examine the body on all sides I walked around the table and, in doing so, made a discovery which increased the interest already awakened by the mute, rigid form. The right arm of the corpse bore on the upper surface several tattooed inscriptions. I read in one line: “Marie Balok,” below the date “1876,” and below this, in a third line, the words: “Pas de chance!” (No chance.)

“Pas de chance!” It seemed as if these words contained the sorrowful index of the hapless human life, which a few hours before had found its pitiful end in a hospital bed. The label at the head of the table informed me that “Marie Balok” had been the name of the body and that she was not more than seventeen. Old Jean, in reply to my questions, could tell me that the beautiful Marie had been brought to the hospital the night before and had died a few minutes after. She was at a dancing hall in the outer boulevards, and, from jealousy, made a furious scene with a young man; in the midst of the outburst of her rage she suddenly sank fainting; when they were unable to revive her by dashing cold water on her and using scent bottles, two of her women friends put her into a carriage and brought her to the hospital, where they gave the physician on duty the explanation Jean repeated. The girl had died without recovering her consciousness, and early in the morning she had been brought down to the dissecting room.

This much the label and old Jean could tell me. But far more than either was revealed by the words tattooed on the girl’s arm: “Pas de chance!” I had before me the title of a biographical romance, and, with little difficulty, read in the dim eyes, on the pale lips and snow-white form of the corpse the romance itself from the first to the last chapter. Marie Balok, her name proved it, was the child of foreigners, who had come to Paris as ten thousand other foreigners do every year to seek a more favorable place for the battle of life. Her father was a workman in Belleville, or on the slopes of Montmartre. Marie had grown up in dirt and poverty, played during the day in the dust and the gutters of the streets of the suburb, and at night went home to find a crust of bread and a pallet in the corner of the room with her parents. She was ten or eleven years old when the insurrection of the Commune occurred. Her father put on the uniform of the insurgents, her mother followed the battalion as a vivandière or a nurse. Eight or nine weeks passed like a whirlwind, and ended with her mother’s leaning against a wall one beautiful May morning and being shot as a petroleuse, and her father’s first being driven to Versailles with blows from the butt ends of muskets, and then sent to New Caledonia.

Marie was left alone in the world, without relatives or acquaintances, like a young swallow thrust from the nest, which must perish miserably in the dust unless Heaven works a miracle in its behalf. The beginning of this miracle was apparently wrested from iron-hearted fate. Marie neither starved to death in summer, nor froze during the following winter. A family of work people, poor and wretched themselves, received the still poorer and more wretched child, and gave it a seat at the scantily spread table and a place on the floor of the bare room. It learned to do something, sewing, embroidery, or flower-making, and soon earned so much that it was no longer compelled to accept the favors of the kindhearted neighbors as alms. Thus Marie spent several years until she had become a blooming, beautiful girl of fifteen. People cannot be beautiful, young, and poor in Paris, unpunished. A temptation sprang from every stone in the pavement, and the finger of evil beckoned to her at every street corner. Soon she no longer went to her work alone, nor returned home without a companion. She found it inconvenient to live with her benefactors, and one day left them to go to a garret room in a shabby house in Montmartre, with a lover in blouse and silk cap. Now, scarcely beyond childhood, she began to lead the life of a solitary Parisian working girl. Toil during the day, in the evening a ball, the cancan till midnight, blows from the friend, hunger, rags, misery, singing and merriment, and withal, total forgetfulness of the past and the future. If a friend carried palpable jealousy too far, she dismissed him unceremoniously with a scornful shrug of the shoulders, and sought another, with whom she remained until the vague, burning longing for happiness and contentment, which filled her heart, urged her once more into new and unknown paths.

It was in the summer of the year 1876 when, one Sunday, she went on an excursion to St. Germain with the friend whom she was making happy by her affection. These summer Sunday excursions to the charming places near the city are the object of longing to all Parisian work-women, who go fairly crazy with joy when they have the prospect of skipping about on the grass during a whole warm, sunny day, gathering flowers, catching butterflies, and singing sentimental songs in the arbor of a country tavern over a bottle of wine. Marie had been gay to the verge of recklessness all day long, had laughed and chattered and sung till she was hoarse and thirsty; in the evening she found herself, with her friend, in a restaurant of St. Germain; they were alone in the tavern, and emptied one glass after another of the cheap wine of the neighborhood. The friend, who had taken off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves to cool himself, was tattooed on the arm like most Paris workmen. There, in various colors, was a flaming heart, two hearts transfixed by a huge arrow as if on a spit, and several names, dates, and inscriptions, such as “Ever Thine!” or “Faithful unto Death!” Marie saw these signs and figures, and a reckless thought darted through her mind. “Tattoo my arm, too!” she cried, and the workman, bursting into a loud laugh, asked what he should tattoo. “First, my name; so that I can try whether it hurts.”

No sooner said than done. Some indigo was quickly obtained, Marie had a needle, and the workman went to work at once. At every prick Marie uttered a faint cry and shrank away a little, but in the pauses she laughed and drank, and the workman did not stop until in large, distinct letters appeared the name: “Marie Balok.”

“Shall I tattoo anything else?”

“Yes, the date.”

Five minutes after the date, “1876,” was inscribed beneath the name. While the workman was rubbing indigo into the little wounds, from each of which a tiny drop of blood was oozing, the landlord brought in a fresh bottle of wine, and Marie soothed the slight pain of the operation with another drink. The man eyed his work approvingly, and then asked:

“Are you satisfied?”

“Yes, my dear fellow.”

“Don’t you want to add something to it? A name and a date—that’s silly. We’ll make it more amusing. Shall I draw an emblem?”

“No.”

“Or a motto?”

“Stop, you’re right. A motto—that’s it. But what shall it be? Let me think.”

The workman proposed some of the usual amorous phrases, but Marie would not accept them. The usual relapse had followed the exuberant mirthfulness of the day, and she now sank into a melancholy reverie. Perhaps, for the first time in her life, she looked back upon her past and found it miserable beyond measure. A wicked fairy seemed to have sat beside her cradle. Every phase of her existence appeared to be under the influence of a curse. Born in poverty, orphaned, growing up in penury, living in shame, vegetating without a future, without a purpose, without pleasure,—this was her past, her present, her future destiny, and her eyes involuntarily filled with tears, as she examined this dark, hideous picture, destitute of light and beauty. And when her friend roused her from her sorrowful reverie with the exclamation: “Then find a motto yourself, if you don’t like mine!” She condensed the substance of her life, as it presented itself to her mental vision, into a phrase which, in this application, lost its triviality, and charged itself with profound desolation as if with electricity, as with a sorrowful smile she said to the workman: “Tattoo Pas de chance! That is the real motto of my life.”

No chance! It was not only the motto of her life, it was also a prophecy. Poor Marie was to have no happiness to the end. Barely seventeen, in the dawn of her young life, only a few months after she had had the sorrowful, resigned motto inscribed upon her arm, she died in a hospital bed. This was the story of beautiful Marie, as, standing beside her lifeless body, I imagined it. Was it really her history? I cannot warrant it, but it is probable. But it is certain that the lovely young girl lay dead before me on the table, and that on the pearly skin of her plump, nobly-moulded arm, as if written in blue, phosphorescent characters by the finger of a malicious demon, were the words: “Pas de chance!”

The dissection showed that Marie had suffered from a defect in the valvular action of the heart. This explained her sudden death in a moment of passionate excitement. I waited until all was over, the other physicians had left the room, and old Jean came forward with his big needle and coarse woolen thread to attend to the body. Now I closed the beautiful Marie’s open eyes, still staring at me with a strange, vacant glance, and slowly withdrew. As I closed the heavy iron door of the dissecting room behind me, it seemed as if, from the last table at the end of the hall, a faint, ghostly voice whispered in my ears: “Pas de chance!”