Fourteen thousand sisters of
charity, distributed among four hundred and twenty convents, look
after the hospitals, attend upon the sick, serve the infirm, bring
up foundlings, provide for orphans, lying-in women, and repentant
prostitutes. The "Visitation" is an asylum for "those who are not
favored by nature," -- and, in those days, there were many more of
the disfigured than at present, since out of every eight deaths one
was caused by the smallpox. Widows are received here, as well as
girls without means and without protection, persons "worn out. with
the agitation of the world," those who are too feeble to support the
battle of life, those who withdraw from it wounded or invalid, and
"the rules of the order, not very strict, are not beyond the health
or strength of the most frail and delicate." Some ingenious device
of charity thus applies to each moral or social sore, with skill and
care, the proper and proportionate dressing. And finally, far from
falling off, nearly all these communities are in a flourishing
state, and whilst among the establishments for men there are only
nine, on the average, to each, in those for women there is an
average of twenty-four.
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