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Even his mother, passionately loving her foundling, was aware of a film between them through which she could not quite see him, beyond which there was something she could not get at, Clare knew nothing of such a separation. He seemed to himself altogether close to his mother, was aware of nothing between to part them. The cause of the thing was, that Clare was not yet in flower.
"To no one would I more gladly commit the infant than to you, madam," returned the captain. "And pray, consider her your property till claimed by others with greater right to her." So it was settled; and Mrs Clayton did indeed prove an affectionate mother to the little foundling.
We are told that, "he was in character at once great and simple." And again it has been said that, "his smile was like heaven." We have seen Handel as the great composer, but he was not so busy in this that his thoughts were not also dwelling upon other things. If ever you go to London, you should of a Sunday morning hear the service at the Foundling Hospital.
In the hospital at Marseilles they were tending the convicts; when the home for the aged poor was instituted, it was under their government; the Foundling Hospital was in their hands. Wherever there was need for zeal and self-denial, there these devoted women were to be found, ready to lay down their lives in the service of their neighbor.
There were medical and surgical clinics, foundling hospitals, Sisters of Charity, men and women professors among the latter the famous Trotula and apothecaries. Dissections were carried out, chiefly upon animals, and human subjects were occasionally used.
In his life Rousseau was everything he should not have been. He was a failure as footman, as servant, as tutor, as secretary, as music copier, as lace maker. He wandered in Turin, Paris, Vienna, London. His immorality was notorious, he was not faithful in love, and his children were sent to a foundling asylum. He was poverty-stricken, dishonest, discontented, and, in his last years, demented.
He very frequently assisted at its performance for the benefit of the Foundling Hospital, and he left the score as a precious gift to the governor of that institution. This work alone brought no less a sum than £10,299 to the funds of the hospital. In this connection a fine saying of his may be repeated.
His dark head, standing out boldly against the bolstering pillows, the fine lines of his face definite, the pallor he was like a Roman cameo. Who and what could he be, this picturesque foundling? His glance flashed into hers delightedly. For hours and hours the constant wonder where she was, why no one mentioned her, why they evaded his apparently casual questions.
The fascinatingly pretty building at the corner, opposite Pisano's Baptistery doors, is the Bigallo, in the loggia of which foundling children used to be displayed in the hope that passers-by might pity them sufficiently to make them presents or even adopt them; but this custom continues no longer. The Bigallo was designed, it is thought, by Orcagna, and it is worth the minutest study.
What inspires me I do not know, perhaps your well-deserved reproach of the other day perhaps the beautiful smile of the angel that dwells in Donna Sovrani's eyes, perhaps the chance meeting with your Rouen foundling on the stairs as I was flying away from your just wrath. He had been gathering roses in the garden, and gave me one with a grace in the giving which made the flower valuable.