Monsieur Pellitier dined with us at our hotel; dinner was served in my bedroom, quite à la française–my room is our living room and a great deal of company has been received in it. After dinner our English friends joined us and we went to the ‘Hopital de St Louis’, a delightful institution for Enfans Trouvés.

We were met at the Gate by the Lady Abbess, who is a very pretty, nice looking, rather young woman. The ladies of our party expressed great delight at the sight of a number of little infants only a few days old, just taken in, all lying in a row of pretty little cribs, perhaps fifteen or twenty, attended with great kindness and attention by three or four old nurses, superintended by a nun. I thought the poor little babies’ legs were swaddled up unnaturally tight. In a large room adjoining we saw 40 to 50 little things from three to six years old asleep in bed, and further on a number a little older were at play. Besides these, there are several hundred young children out at nurse with respectable poor people in the country. The boys are brought up and educated for soldiers.

Adjoining to this institution and superintended by the same nuns is an Hospital, institution into which are admitted decrepid old people of all sorts, people who have any incurable desease upon them, besides a few crazy people and idiots. Though not in such fine order, or quite so well managed as the Abbé aux Dames, it is still a fine institution.