ateau here in 1286.
The present edifice was constructed largely by order of Richelieu, for
invalided soldiers, in 1632; it has been devoted to its present uses as
a modern hospital and asylum since 1837.

It is organized in two great divisions,--a hospice for old men, and an
asylum for the deranged; but the latter includes an infirmary for idiot,
epileptic, and feeble-minded children. The insane and the children are
received from the Asile Clinique de la Seine, in the Rue Cabanis, and
are maintained by the department of the Seine. The buildings of the
hospice proper are arranged around four rectangular courts, planted with
trees and gardens, in which the aged inmates sun themselves, and when it
rains they take refuge under arcades known as the _Allee des Bronchites_
and the _Rue de Rivoli de Bicetre_. For a considerable distance around
the establishment these pensioners may be seen in fine weather taking
the air; they have this privilege for the whole of the day on Sundays,
Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and from eleven o'clock in the morning to four
in the afternoon on the remaining days of the week.

All the sounder ones, to the number of some four hundred, are obliged to
work at one of the many useful trades practised in the various
ateliers, and they gain, for their own use, from forty centimes to a
franc a day, money which goes to provide them with various small
creature comforts. Those who are not strong enough, or capable enough,
to work in the ateliers are obliged to pick vegetables for the culinary
department, for which they receive no pay;--from this obligation no one
is free excepting the octogenarians, the sickly, and the active workers.
The administration also encourages the enterprise of those who wish to
work on their own account; it provides them with a locality and
facilities, for which they pay a monthly rental of from twenty centimes
to one franc twenty centimes a month. Some of these petty industries are
very curious and ingenious.

At both the Bicetre and the Salpetriere, the quarters devoted to the
children, boys and girls, in which almost every variety of childish
affliction, bodily and mental, is under treatment, are the most worthy
the visitor's attention, though the inspection is not always a pleasant
one. The general method employed is that of Seguin and Delasiauve; by
its aid, and that of infinite tact and patience, very many of these
helpless unfortunates are provided with faculties and made use