The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1882-12-14
The MOrgue OF st. Bernard.

| The great curiosity at the monastery
OF the Mount st. Bernard is the morgue.
If the day is little warm the brother
who attends to visitors hesitates bit
before opening the door of the wooden
house just outside the chief building. He
first drives away the dogs, who come
prowlinng about, snuf1ing the air sus-
piciously, and has them Shut into their
room opposite the huge refectory. Then
he marshals the little company of inter-
national tourists in line before the mys-
ferrous door, and opens the chamber of
horrors. The keen mountain air rushes
IN, and presently you are conscious of a
faint, sickly odor-not strong enough to
be repulsive, but eminently suggestive
OF death. Then, as you stand there peer
ing with strained eyeballs into the dark
ness, you become vaguely conscious that
a face IS looking at you. defy any one
who is possessed of the smallest grain of
imagination to see that mysterious face
growing slowly out of the obscurity with
out sudden sinking of the heart and a
chill which no effort of the will can sup
press. 1t Is the face of woman-and
yet OF a ghost; kind of corporeal pres
ence divested of life and yet so horribly
like life that you are almost afraid the
bony and skinny frame to which it be-
longs will arise and stretch out its dread
full arms, and drag you down into the
depths which you so instinctively shun.
The good brother does not say anything;
he watches the effect of this curious spec
tacle upon you. Pretty soon you can
discern that the face belongs to the BODY
OF woman-and that this woman is
clasping to her breast the form of tiny
babe. The mother is seated on the ground,
and appears to be dazed by the light
pouring down into her darksome habta-
ton. But oh! the horror of her face!
Here is death without decay; here, in
this wondrous air, on this pass more than
eight thousand feet above the sea level,
putrefaction is unknown; and bodies
found in the SHOWS in winter-or after
the white shroud has melted away from
the bosom of nature in the spring-are
preserved entire so long as the monks
care to keep them. The grimness of the
spectacle is enhanced by the fact that
nearly every body found is contorted,
twisted, strained and knotted in fantastic
shape. Now and then one which bears
all the appearance of tranquil sleep is
brought in; but in most cases there are
indications that man and woman, in
their battle with nature, fought hard and
desperately and refused to be overcome
until every particle of force was ex-
hausted. The brethren gather up the
bodies with tender care and place them
in the dead-house in. the usually vain
hope that some relatives may come to
recognize them. Where is the father of
the child which this strange spectral
mother clasps in her arms? What was
the history of the woman who had thus
wandered in the wild winter from the
Rhone valley toward the kinder and
warmer Italian slopes? Perhaps her hus-
band was with her-and perhaps his
body now lies at the bottom of some prec-
ipice where even the 'spious monks of
Saint Bernardo cannot find him-or per-
haps he is here, in the dead-house;
perhaps that PROSTATE body, seeming to
grovel on the rocky floor, is his. The
peasants rarely carry any paper which
can completely identify them, and some
times the unfortunates found dead in the
pass led such wandering lives-going to
Switzerland for harvest work in the
summer and to Italy when the winter
nips them-that their passports even give
no clew to to their birthplaces Or native
villages. es.-COr. Boston Journal.