born, twenty-six that had reached
the full term, and of adults two hundred
and thirty-eight men and fifty-one women.
He divided the two last into four categories.
Of secret homicides, there were the bodies of
three men and two women; of such as had
died from sickness or very suddenly, thirty-four
men and eleven women; of the accidentally
hurt where death had supervened,
sixty-six men and four women; and of suicides,
the large number of one hundred and
thirty men and thirty-five women.

I remarked that the disproportion between
the sexes was much greater than I had
imagined; indeed I had rather expected that
the balance would have inclined the other
way.

"If Monsieur would permit me," said the
polite Baptiste, "I would cause him to observe
that men have more reasons for committing
suicide than women; or, if this be disputed,
that they are less tenacious of existence than
the other sex, who understand that their
mission is to bear. A woman's hope, Monsieur,
is almost as strong as her love, often they are
the same. But a man! before the face of
adversity he turns pale; the pain of the present
is intolerable to him; in preference to
that, he severs ties which a woman shudders
to think of breaking. A woman never forgets
that her children are a part of herself; a
man frequently considers them a mere accident.

"But, after all," I remarked, "the sum
total which you have named appears to me
not enormous, considering the extent of
Paris and its dependencies, the number of its
inhabitants, and," I added, after a short
pause, "the impressionable character of the
people."

"That observation would be perfectly
just," returned Monsieur Baptiste, "if all
who met with violent deaths in Paris were
transported to the Morgue. But the fact is
different. Those chiefly — I might almost say
those only— are brought here, whose place of
abode is unknown in the quarter where they
are found. The persons accidentally killed
at work, a proportion of those who are run
over or injured by animals, the victims of
poison or charcoal, or hanging, or duels, have
for the most part a fixed residence, and to
bring them to the Morgue for identification
would be unnecessary. Even such as try the
water, and they furnish the majority of cases
(this act being the least premeditated), have
homes or the dwellings of friends or masters
to which they are conveyed by witnesses of
the deed. It is the solitary, homeless suicide,
who in the middle of the night leaps from
the parapet of the bridge, and is found in the
meshes of the filets des morts (the dead-nets)
that comes to this establishment. That this
is a fact the general returns officially declare;
for the number of drowned persons who are
exposed in the Morgue are only one-sixth
of those whose remains are taken to their
own dwellings; and this proportion is
exceeded in most of the other cases."

I ventured to suppose that where everything
was so methodically ordered, some approximation
as to the cause of the numerous
suicides— the last scene of which was witnessed
in the Morgue— had been arrived at in
the establishment. Monsieur Baptiste told
me I was right. Diligent inquiry, voluntary
information, and conjecture based upon long
experience, had, he believed, arrived very
nearly at the truth, and these conclusions
were thus set forth.

Taking one hundred and sixty-nine for the
annual aggregate, the number of men who
commited suicide in a state of insanity or
delirium, was twenty-two; of women eight. On
account of domestic trouble, the numbers were
eighteen and six; of drunkenness, fifteen and
two; of misery, thirteen and four; of disgust of
life, eleven and three; of disappointed love, ten
and three; of misconduct, eight and two; of
incurable maladies, eight and one; dread of
judicial investigation, seven and one; embezzlement
and defalcations, six and one;
while on account of causes that could not be
ascertained or guessed at there remained
sixteen men and five women.

It appeared from what Monsieur Baptiste
further stated, that self-activity in procuring
the means of death was much greater in the
men than the women.

"A woman, Monsieur," said the greffier,
"when she has made up her mind to die,
chooses the speediest and most passive form
of self-destruction. Shrinking from the
thoughts of blood, she seldom employs firearms
or a sharp instrument— these are a man's
weapons; for those who shoot themselves,
we have ten men and only one woman; by
the knife three men alone; it is merely on
the stage that a woman uses the dagger. In
suffocation by the fumes of charcoal— the
easiest death known— the women exceed the
men, the numbers being three and two; in
cases of drowning, the general proportion
holds twenty-six women and ninety-seven
men selecting that mode of death. Sixteen
men and two women hang themselves, four
men and three women throw themselves from
high places, two men end their lives by
poison; and in this way, Monsieur, the sum
total is made up."

"I have," I said, "but one more question
to ask now. What is the period of life at
which suicide is most frequent?"

"A man's tendency to shorten his days,"
replied Monsieur Baptiste, "is principally
developed between the ages of twenty and
fifty; it is strongest in woman before she
reaches thirty, diminishes from that age to
forty, subsides still more within the next ten
years, revives again for another decade, and
then becomes almost extinct. Old men
become weary of life towards its close much
oftener than women. In that salle d'exposition
I have seen in one year the white hairs