If we were living in society, our expenses would be three times as much;" and, not content with providing for themselves, they give in charity.
Among these communities several hundreds are educational establishments; a very great number give gratuitous primary instruction .-- Now, in 1789, there are no other schools for girls, and were these to be suppressed, every avenue of instruction and culture would be closed to one of the two sexes, forming one-half of the French population.

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.