The Abandoned Dead

Have you ever come across, in the streets adjacent to hospitals, around 3 p.m. on a gloomy afternoon, a poor hearse preceded by two undertakers and with no relatives or friends accompanying it? Passers-by stop for a moment, follow the convoy with a saddened eye, a few men mechanically uncover themselves, and it is the slow march towards the distant cemetery, way over there, outside the fortifications. The stranger crosses Paris amidst general indifference.
The odyssey of an individual who followed the funerals, every day, at the same time, heading towards the northern suburbs was once told; but this one was not a maniac, but an interested person who took a seat in a mourning carriage to go free of charge to his home located near the necropolis. He was never seen following a pauper's funeral.
Many associations, with the most diverse aims, exist in Paris. Would there not be one which, without imitating the thrifty traveller, would delegate a few members to the burials of the poor without family and would have a modest flower placed on the hearse? This would be a meritorious work of which charitable souls have not yet thought! And one would no longer see in Paris these lugubrious processions which break the hearts of the most hardened.