Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/340

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patronages, or boys' clubs. There are forty-three societies for infancy, eighty-seven crèches,—an excellent institution invented nearly fifty years ago by M. Marbeau,—two hundred and ten infants' schools, first established by a Protestant clergyman in the Vosges, and now spread all over France. In 1895, 37,253 children were placed in the country, entailing an expense of 9,336,711 francs, and every year the number increases.

Each denomination has its private and organised charities, and the late Maxime du Camp awards the palm of incomparable perfection in this path to the children of Israel. The Rothschild hospital, the Rothschild asylum for old ages of both sexes, the children's school, and school for girls of Madame Coralie Cahen, are the best of their kind in Paris. When one reads the story of Jewish charities in Paris, one is stupefied by the senseless outburst of mad and wicked anti-semitism which rages in France to-day. The Baron Henri de Rothschild has instituted a sort of mothers' refuge up in the poor and populous quarter of Belleville, where he gives advice to mothers, and supplies them with a litre of sterilised milk daily. Believe me, when you dive below the surface of Paris, you will find it to be something nobler than a city of pleasure. Poverty and misery abound because, alas! they are inseparable from existence; but there is no city in the world where poverty is more