The sound in the wards could only be compared to the faint and pitiful bleating of lambs.  A lady who frequently visited the institution said that she never remembered examining the array of clean white cots that lined the walls without finding at least one dead babe.  “In front of the fire was a sloping stage, on which was a mattress, and a row of these little creatures placed on it to warm and await their turn to be fed from the spoon by a nurse.  After much persuasion, one that was crying piteously was released from its swaddling bands; it stretched its little limbs, and ceased its wailings.”  Supposing these children of misfortune survived the first few weeks of such a life they were sent into the country to be reared by different peasants; but there again a large percentage died from infantile diseases.  Mrs. Fry succeeded in securing some ameliorations of the treatment of the babes; but sisters, doctors, superior, and all, seemed bound by the iron bands of custom and tradition.

The Archbishop of Paris was somewhat annoyed at her proceedings and expressed his displeasure; it seemed more, however, to be directed against her practice of distributing the Scriptures, than really against her prison work.

At Nismes, under the escort of five armed soldiers, because of the known violence of the desperadoes whom she visited, she inspected the Maison Centrale, containing about 1,200 prisoners.  She interceded for some of them that they might be released from their fetters, undertaking at the same time that the released prisoners should behave well.  At a subsequent visit, after holding a religious service among these felons, the same men thanked her with tears of gratitude.

Much to her delight, she discovered a body of religionists who held principles similar to those of the Society of Friends.  They were descendants of the Camisards, a sect of Protestants who took refuge in the mountains of the Cevennes during the persecution which followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and were descended originally from the Albigenses.  Their three most distinguished pastors were Claude Brousson, who took part in the sufferings at the general persecution of the Protestants; Jean Cavalier, the soldier-pastor who led his flock to battle, and who now sleeps in an English graveyard; and Antoine Court, who formed this “church in the desert,” into a more compact body.  The first of these pastors was hanged for “heresy” at Montpellier, in 1698; but he, together with his successors, labored so devoutly and so ardently, that the persecuted remnant rose from the dust and proved themselves valiant for the truth as they had received and believed it.  It was not possible that the seed of a people which had learnt the sermons preached to them off by heart, and written the texts on stone tablets, in order to pass them from one mountain village to another, could ever die out.  The descendants of those martyrs had come down through long generations, to nourish