The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-10-23 00:00:00

iMIENT TO THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD

captain, died at her side, enthusiastically believing
that the Eagle was still victorious. Her leg was
amputated on the scene of slaughter ; and Breton
Double, respected and admired by her late ene-
mies, was conducted to Dublin, where she was
obliged to undergo a second amputation above
the knee. After passing six years in this country,
everywhere honoured and hospitably treated, she
returned into France on the death of Louis XVIII.,
furnished with certificates from the French consul
in Dublin, and ambassador in London. From
her long absence it was concluded that she had
been killed at Waterloo ; and, in consequence,
the name of this woman, so worthy of the Legion
of Honor, was not retained in the list of members.
She eventually obtained from Charles X. a pen-
sion of 280 francs ; but the revolution of July,
so beneficial to others, did but add to the misfor-
tunes of Breton Double, who was deprived of the
means of subsistence granted to her by the King.
Services such as hers could not, however, be
passed over unrewarded ; and in 1833 or 1834,
the widow Poncet was informed that the Minister
of War was in expectation of being enabled to
satisfy all the demands she had on her country
for her long and faithful services, by re-admitting
her to the order of the Cross of Honor, and by
bestowing on her the pension of a wounded
quarter-master, and also the widow of a captain.
The following sentiment, which she often uttered
under her sad trials, will manifest the character
of this extraordinary and noble-minded woman :
" Although my fortune is humble, my heart is
elevated."
The son of Breton Double obtained high rank
in the dragoons, and accompanied the Emperor
to Elba.
Reader, should you meet at Grenoble a female
painfully moving on crutches, a body humbled by
grief and wounds, this is Breton Double—salute
her ; respect should be paid to the unfortunate
and deserving.

147

zine of destructive materials, which may explode
at any moment, carrying ruin and death into
thousands of families. The danger to their brave
troops from suspected mines in the Malakhoff,
when they first entered it, was not more imminent
than it is to the home-staying citizens themselves
from the unsuspected " sap' in Paris. You need
not go into the slums to prove it. Don't go there;
if you wish to keep a good opinion of Paris. We
will travel no further than to one of the chief
establishments in the Rue de Richelieu,—say the
Hotel des Princes,—where people are charged
from five to ten francs a night for a middling bed
up in the seventh heaven, and have the honour of
paying two francs for a small sole for breakfast,
and three francs for four penn'orth of boiled rice,
called a boudin de riz. We mean no offence, but thus
mark the great respectability of the house. Well,
we have before us the personal evidence of four
separate individuals, who, previously in good
health, were here attacked on the same day and
again afterwards with violent diarrhoea, sickness,
and acute pains, distinctly attributable to the
want of proper sanitary arrangements in the build-
ing. We looked into the circumstances ourselves,
and can therefore speak positively. We have
entered houses of a lower grade, so full of in-
jurious emanations that healthful life could not
possibly be maintained therein, and we have
found, in such few inquiries as we were able to
make, the people dying off, notwithstanding
their out-of-door life and other advantageous
circumstances, at such ages as would prove the
truth of the assumpion. Many of the houses
contain a fever-still always at work. Paris is at
this moment prevaded by foul smells and poison-
ous gases, rivalling in variety those sung by
Coleridge in Cologne ; and the advantages which
Nature has given to this beautiful city are thus
more than counter-balanced by the blindness and
carelessness of man. Truly, 'midst all its beauty
and its brightness, there is no lack of materials
for a book of "Paris Shadows," thick and threaten-
ing, and we would commend to those who are in
power the special duty of forthwith stirring to
lessen them. Beauty in front will not compensate
for filth, disease, and death behind.—The Builder.