trunks of which the revolutionary axe had cut off the branches. In 1800,
"the re-establishment of a corporation shocked current ideas."[5309] But
the able administrators of the Consulate required volunteer women for
service in their hospitals. In Paris, Chaptal, the minister, comes
across a lady superior whom he formerly knew and enjoins her to gather
together ten or a dozen of her surviving companions; he installs them in
the rue Vieux-Colombier, in a building belonging to the hospitals, and
which he furnishes for forty novices; at Lyons, he notices that the
"Sisters" of the general hospital were obliged, that they might perform
their duties, to wear a lay dress; he authorizes them to resume their
costume and their crosses; he allows them two thousand francs to
purchase necessaries, and, when they have donned their old uniform, he
presents them to the First Consul. Such is the first sprout, very small
and very feeble, that appears in the institution of Saint-Vincent
de Paule at Paris and in that of Saint-Charles at Lyons. In our
days[5310](around 1885), the congregation of Saint-Charles, besides
the parent-house at Lyons, has 102 others with 2,226 nuns, and the
congregation of Saint-Vincent de Paule, besides the parent-house at
Paris, has 88 others with 9,130 nuns. Often, the new vegetation on the
trunk amputated by the Revolution is much richer than on the old one;
in 1789, the institution of the "Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes" had
800 members; in 1845, there were 4,000; in 1878, 9,818; on the 31st of
December, 1888, there were 12,245. In 1789, it counted 126 houses; in
1888, there were 1,286.--Meanwhile, alongside of the old plantations, a
large number of independent germs, new species and varieties, spring up
spontaneously, each with its own aim, rules and special denomination.
On Good Friday, April 6, 1792, at the very date of the decree of the
Legislative Assembly abolishing all religious communities,[5311] one is
born, that of the "Soeurs de la Retraite Chretienne," at Fontenelle, and,
from year to year, similar plants constantly and suddenly spring out of
the ground for a century. The list is too long to be counted; a large
official volume of more than four hundred pages is filled with the
mere statement of their names, localities and statistics.--This volume,
published in 1878, divides religious institutions into two groups. We
find in the first one, comprising the legally authorized societies, at
first 5 congre