Père la Chaise.--Funeral of Bellini.--Grave-Merchants. Description
of the Cemetery.--Graves of the Rich and the Poor.--The Fête des
Morts.--Tomb of Abelard and Heloise.--Remarkable personages buried
there.--The Aristocracy of the Grave.--Monument of
Foy.--Inscription.--Grave yards in Cities and Towns.--French
regulations for the inhumation of the dead.
Paris, October 29th, 1835.
I took advantage of a beautiful day, which peeped out yesterday, to pay
my respects to _Père la Chaise_, and I am going to give you some account
of this celebrated city of the dead. But what can I say? I feel scarce
wit enough to talk about the weather, and I am going to tell you of that
which all the world has described so beautifully. I know not the reason,
but I have even less sense and imagination than usual, since I am in
Paris. If it were not for Madame de Sevigné, and a few other such
characters, I would lay the blame upon the heavy, unthinking and hazy
influences of these northern climates. I followed the funeral of
_Bellini_, the composer, author of Pirati, Puritani, and other
first-rate operas. Is it not a pity to die with so much talent at
twenty-nine, when so many fools live out their four-score? I do not
recollect any thing that old Methusaleh said or did, with his nine
hundred years; and he could not have made such an opera as Puritani, if
he had lived as many more. He was accompanied (Bellini, I mean) by the
music of all Paris; and the music of the spheres must have played, this
day, a sweeter harmony.
The mass of Cherubini, so appropriate to the occasion, and so much
better than the archbishop’s prayers, was forbidden by the archbishop,
because it had feminine voices in it; and his worship would not have the
chapel of the Invalids, all hung over so beautifully with bloody flags,
profaned by musical women; not even by the exquisite Grisi. So we had
the 39th Psalm. Don’t you think the spirit of the composer must have
winced? But the march, with full band, along the Boulevards for several
miles, and the end of the ceremony at Père la Chaise, were imposing.
Speeches were pronounced in Italian and French by good orators; and,
among the listeners, some of us were queens and princesses. The breezes
whispered though the pines, and a thunder storm, as if expressly, came
over the sun, and played bass in the clouds, and the clouds themselves
wept as the grave closed upon Bellini.--I went to the Invalids, with a
pretty English woman, one of his scholars, who wailed his loss
inconsolably, and who, for certain, was in love with him. Women, you
know, always fall in love with their music masters; Mary Queen of Scots,
and the pretty Mrs. Thrale into the bargain.
This cemetery of Père la Chaise, thirty years ago, had fourteen tombs;
it counts, in the present year, fifty thousand. Hundreds of architects,
and sculptors, and statuaries, besides multitudes of labourers, find
here a new source of occupation, and improvement in the arts; so that a
goodly part of the present generation gets its living by the death of
its predecessors. Here is a whole street of marble yards, which
manufactures tombs for domestic and foreign commerce, near a mile long;
and mighty heaps of bronze, granite and marble, exquisitely chiselled,
recommending themselves to the notice of the public. Tombstones, urns,
bronze gates, iron railings, crosses, pillars, pyramids, statues and all
the furniture of the grave, are laid out, and exhibited here, as the
merchandise of the shops and bazaars of the latest and newest
fashions--“_Grand Magazin à la General Foy--à l’Abelard et Heloise_,”
&c.; as in the city, “_Grand Magazin du Doge de Venise_,” and by trying
to under-bury one another, they have reduced funeral expenses in every
branch to their minimum;--there is, perhaps, no place in the world where
one can die, and be buried so moderately, as in Paris. Here is one
selling out at first cost, to close a concern; and another’s whole stock
of tombs is brought to the hammer, by the death of the proprietor.
These grave-merchants used to follow the funeral processions, in swarms,
to the verge of the tomb, offering to the mourners bills and
advertisements, and specimens of their industry, but this emulation has
been lately forbidden, by an order of police. These people have got, by
professional habit, to think, like the philosophers, that the principal
business of man, upon this earth, is to die. The staple of conversation
is, the grave; and there is as much pedantry here about the dead people,
as in the Latin Quarter there is about the dead languages.--“When do
you think you can pay me that bill of marble, M. Grigou?”--“Ah, sir!
business is very slack just now; and the season, you see, is almost
over. M. Barbeau, I have been twenty years in the trade, and never saw
such times. It really seems as if people had left off dying. But, if
business becomes brisk, as we expect, towards Christmas, I will pay you
off then; if not, you will have to wait till next August.---- When the
cholera was here---- Helas! I fear we shall never see such times
again.”--“_Eh bien, patience_, M. Grigou, we must hope for the best.”
They have here, too, a kind of Exchange, where they meet to see the
state of the market--to see the newest fashions or inventions of urns
and crosses, and other sepulchral images, and to read over the bills of
mortality, as elsewhere one reads the price current. The joy of a death
is, of course, proportionate to the worth, fashion and distinction of
the individual who has died. When General Mortier was killed, on the
28th, stock rose one and a quarter.--“Well! what is there
to-day?”--“Nothing!--and getting worse and worse!--but what can one
expect else under such a detestable government? You remember how it was
under the Restoration. Then we had such persons as Marshal Suchet, and
Madame Demidoff to bury; now we bury nothing but the canaille. Even
under Charles, we had some few nobles left, who could pay for a snug
mausoleum; but what is a French nobleman now?--a poor, half-cut
gentleman, with a ribbon in his button-hole, which he calls a
decoration, and without money to pay the grave digger or the sexton.----
Ah! M. Grigou, things must have a change!”
The gate of the cemetery, which terminates the view at the end of this
street, is surmounted by statuary, and is magnificent, like that of some
great prince. It is always besieged by equipages, and vehicles of every
kind, of the visiters, who are coming and going at all hours--all except
one--his equipage goes home empty! Around this entrance is a great crowd
of women, all over smiles, who offer you wreaths, chaplets, and crosses
of orange blossom, amaranth, and other ever-green, very prettily
interwoven, and they get a living by this little trade. As you ascend
the hill, you see groups of visiters, noisy and talkative, who on
entering are suddenly silent, struck with the awfulness of the place. A
kind of death-chill runs through the blood. But after a closer view the
mind becomes serene, and even roams with a delightful curiosity amongst
the tombs.
Nearly all the ground is covered with small pines, and with fern,
woodbines, and jessamines twisted into tufted thickets. There is quite a
deficiency of cypress and willow, and hemlock; the vegetation is
generally stinted in its growth, and looks forlorn enough indeed.
Monuments of brightest marble and exquisite sculpture dazzle the eye on
all sides; and there are smooth and gravelled walks, terraces, and
flowery banks, paths winding along the hillside, and little scenery of
every variety; and nature has borrowed so many ornaments from art, and
wears them with so lively a grace, that one is disposed rather to
admiration than to melancholy musings; one would think that Hymen and
Cupid and not Death walked through her hills and valleys.
This city, like living cities, has its fashionable and rabble districts;
its Broadways and Chestnut streets, its Southwark, and Northern
Liberties. On the summits and flanks of all the hills, or apart, and
half hidden in groves of pines, are mausoleums rich with Egyptian,
Grecian, and modern luxury. It seems as if the dead, the business of
life being done, had retired here to their magnificent villas. Only
think of your scraggy grave-yards of Philadelphia--enough to disgust one
with dying. Distinguished and learned dust is collected here from all
nations, and virtues are puffed and advertised in all human languages.
Whatever one may think of the French people alive, one cannot hope to
meet any where a better set of dead people. Here are none but faithful
husbands and incorruptible wives, and you would think it had rained
patriots. As for great generals, they seem to come up in the parsley-bed
as they did in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Surely Père la Chaise still
exercises his office of absolution on these grounds.
At the foot of the hill are immense multitudes of dead in a level and
open field, assorted in rows, as the vegetables in the Garden of Plants.
These are the working people of the other world. They have no shelter of
marble, or of shrubbery, or of cypress; no weeping willow hangs its
branches upon the little hill of earth, but a small black board, shaped
into a cross, and standing up prim at the head of each one, reveals his
humble name and merits. You see the hearse arrive here with a few
attendants on foot. A priest in an old rusty gown, a boy in a frock no
longer white, and an officer under a cocked hat, attend. These form a
little procession from the hearse: the priest mutters an epitome of the
service, and sprinkles the holy water upon the grave; he, the
grave-digger, and the driver betraying not the slightest emotion in the
performance of these duties; and the whole escort disappears suddenly
and silently. Beyond this, is a field of a still humbler lot, where
anything is buried; this they call the _Fosses communs_. They who have
no money, consequently no friends, are buried here. It is a yawning
excavation, into which one cannot look without horror. The corpse is
carried down a long stairway, and placed without distinction of age or
sex in a row alongside the corpse which preceded it; and the name of the
individual is no more heard--upon the earth. He was perhaps a suicide,
or a victim of some accident or murder, a stranger without a friend, or
a labourer without a home. No priest attends here.--One other piece of
earth, retired from the rest, has a special designation. It is the only
religious distinction of the cemetery; the burial place of the Jews.
“Beneath her palm, here sad Judea weeps.”
The graves of the rich are mostly held in perpetuity; those of the poor
are disposable anew at the end of every six years; the first lessee
having always the right of pre-emption. There is a chapel on the highest
spot of the cemetery, and from its threshold the priest has a naked view
of all Paris. He has spread out before him his whole stock in trade, and
sees his customers winding up the hill; of which every day furnishes him
its contingent. If for the district of the poor, he performs the
service, as I have described, by his deputies.
But when you see the portals of the marble palace open between the
Corinthian columns, and winged angels, chiselled from the marble of
Genoa, and the priest kneeling in deep devotion before the altar, all of
gold; you will see at the same time the whole street leading up to the
Barrière d’Aulney filled with an immense cortége of gorgeous equipages,
all of crape; and you will see in the first carriages persons in deep
distress, mopping their eyes, all swollen with grief. Keep in your
tears, they are not the least vexed. On the contrary, they cry with a
great deal of pleasure. They are crying by the month, and getting their
living by it. This custom of crying by deputy was practised by the
Romans, and is common to all the refined nations of modern Europe; and
it is known that hired weepers can wail and cry a great deal better than
they who are really grieved; they have a greater quantity of salt water,
and have given it the habit of running out by the eyes. The coffin
descends from the hearse, glittering with the precious metals, and
whilst music wakes around, or speeches are pronounced in eloquent grief,
or masses chanted in classic Latin, it is conveyed with pomp into its
vault, and laid up for eternity upon its shelf. There is a person here,
who keeps a register of the names of the deceased, and is a kind of
chief clerk to the Fates.
There is one day of the year when all Paris comes hither dressed in
white robes, ten thousand at a time, to do honour to the dead. It looks
as if the sheeted dead themselves had risen from the earth. This is
called the _Fête des Morts_. Each one brings a garland or crown, and
hangs it over a friend or relative; and the whole city bends before the
graves of General Foy, Manuel, and Benjamin Constant. Indeed every day
of the year that the weather will permit, the cemetery is crowded,
either with strangers led by curiosity, or with friends busied in
trimming the foliage or flowers, or hanging funeral wreaths upon the
monuments. This may be partly vanity, but vanity is a very good quality,
if rightly directed, and a great many excellent virtues may be grafted
on it. As for myself, I have always found it exceedingly difficult to
practise several of the virtues when no one was looking on.
I observed, on entering, a gothic monument, and under its dome, two
figures of persons recumbent at the side of each other, who were not
always of marble. I will not tell you their names. If they had gone
quietly with their marriage articles to St. Sulpice, and to bed, and
distributed the wedding cake the next day to their cousins of St.
Germain, I should not now have the pleasure of musing upon this little
gothic chapel; we should have been deprived of one of the best
love-tales that ever was, and some of the best verses in our English
language, and _Nouvelle Heloise_ into the bargain. Unsuccessful wooing,
you see, has its uses. What would you gentle shepherdesses have done
without Petrarch’s sonnets, without Virgil’s fourth book, and Sappho’s
little ditty, Englished by Philips.
The Republic brought this pair of lovers from Chalons to Paris, where
they have been knocked about, till they have become as common as any
pair of students and grisettes of the Luxembourg, (the barbarians!)
instead of embowering them in the shady wood at a distance from the
road, by the side of a murmuring and romantic stream, where the
traveller might alight from his horse, just at setting sun, and give his
undisturbed and undivided feelings to their hapless fates. Here they
are, the unfortunates, alongside of any body, who has died in lawful
wedlock, and their history, as if no one knew it, written upon their
tomb, in fine round text, with their names. The children are learning to
spell on it: a, b, _ab_; _e_ by itself _e_; l, a, r, d, _lard_.--I am
now writing from the spot, perhaps the very spot in which their hearts
beat so high in love, and sank so deep in despair--in the very spot, for
all I know, in the very chamber--where she “hung upon his lips, and
drank delicious poison from his eye!”--where now, alas, no loves are
disappointed, and where there is no drinking of any thing stronger or
sweeter than a little _vin ordinaire_ after one’s potage.
On leaving this fairy spot, I wandered along a hundred little
footpaths, and read over a thousand crabbed names, which carried no
signification to the mind, of a thousand polite nothings, who had put on
their breeches in the morning and taken them off at night, and who have
monuments in Père la Chaise for such merits--to Monsieur _Doda_, who
made excellent _patés de foies gras_; besides, he made the Papage
_Vero-Doda_, and he has the mausoleum of a prince, splendid with
festoons, I believe of sausages, on the pediment; and a Monsieur
_Sebastian_, who made shoes for the Duchesse de Berri’s dear little
feet, has one still more magnificent,--this is the man who made the
slipper “_dans un moment d’enthousiasme_;” and lastly a
coiffeur--inexorable fate!
“Sensible et genereux, dont le cœur gouta l’ivresse
Du bonheur, du genie.” ... and so forth.
An obelisk of Carrara marble, forty feet high, was about to rise upon
the tomb of M. Boulard, “Upholsterer.” He had journeyed himself to Genoa
and chosen the marble, and a foundation trench forty feet deep had been
dug, and 400,000 francs devoted to the monument; but his heirs have
thought proper to depart from the intentions of the testator, and have
buried him in a chapel at St. Mandé which he had built himself at the
cost of a million of francs. The site of his grave here is occupied by
the pyramidal monument, with two lateral staircases of fifteen or twenty
steps descending to its base, of a rich Portuguese family, Dios Santos.
A Frenchman, who enjoys life so well, is, of all creatures, the least
concerned at leaving it. He selects his marble of the finest tints; and
has often his coffin made and grave dug in advance. I noticed several
open graves, which seemed to me yawning for their victims. They dig a
good many a-head, so as to have them on hand, like ready-made coats
(without the sleeves) at the mercer’s. If a Frenchman buries his wife,
he erects her a tomb and one (blanc) for himself, at the side of her.
Then frolics out life in wine and good dinners, and has his tomb at Père
la Chaise as his box at the opera. He buries his wife too the more
splendidly, having a half interest in the concern.
I found myself at length upon a street crowded with most remarkable
personages; but so many, that I must put you off as Homer did with his
ships. Here was _François Neufchatel_, a minister of the Interior, and
author in prose and rhyme, who sung, _tour à tour_, Marie Antoinette and
the Republic, who loved Napoleon and the Empire, and rejoiced at the
Restoration. In his vicinity was _Regnaud St. Jean d’Angely_, who used
to put off his brass for gold, his words for wisdom, and sometimes, in
America, his travelling mistress for his wife.
“Le meme jour a vu finir
Ses maux, son exil, et sa vie!”
And here too was the stern and philanthropic _Lanjuinais_, who conjured
up a devil he could not lay, in the revolution; and the great jurist
_Cambacérés_--under Louis XVI. a squire of Montpelier, under the
Convention, Citizen Cambacérés; Colleague of Bonaparte in the consulate,
and President, Duke, Prince, and Marshal of the Empire under Napoleon.
The sword sometimes yields to the gown, and the laurel to the toga. He
died with all the decorations of Europe about his neck. I would have
graven the Code Napoleon upon his tomb. Remember to give him the credit
for dissuading the execution of the Duke d’Enghein, the Russian and
Spanish campaigns, and the continuation of the war after Dresden. But he
never put his honours to the hazard of dissuading any thing very
strenuously; like Piso, the Roman, he never differed long in opinion
with a “man who had ten legions.”
Do let me introduce you to Monsieur _Denon_; he loved the ladies so,
and what is more, the ladies loved him; he first taught us to read
hieroglyphics, and brought us news out of Egypt about Pharoah and the
Ptolemies, and he brought over that great “Zodiac of Dendera” in the
king’s library;--and to M. _Messier_, who did not know there was a
Revolution in France, being very busy about the revolution of the stars.
While his wife was dying, he asked a few minutes’ absence to look after
a comet. He died himself in looking through a telescope, and his friends
had but one eye to close on that occasion. Not a word to _Chenier_, the
Jacobin poet; the world has not yet made up its mind about his merits;
nor to _Parny_, whose poetry is good enough to deserve your contempt,
pure and unqualified. A lyre hangs upon the tomb of _Grêtry_, and a
globe in flames upon Madame Blanchard.
If I had time, I would inveigh here against the audacity of woman. She
kills tyrants, commits suicide, and goes up in balloons. She leaves us
nothing, unless going to war, and scarcely that, to characterize our
manhood. A Roman Emperor was obliged to forbid her, by an edict, the
profession of the gladiators.--I must not pass unnoticed M. _Pinée_, who
passed his life, and with some success, in teaching crazy folks to be
reasonable--those in the mad-house. And those two brothers, not less
worthy than the best, they who gave eyes to the blind and ears to the
dumb, _Haüy_ and _Sicard_;--they must not be forgotten; and here is a
poor poet (excuse the tautology) who is buried as decently as if he had
made sausages.
I will conclude this part of my catalogue, already as long as Lloyd’s or
Homer’s, with a Scotch cousin of mine, Mr. _Justice_. He left his wife,
young, amiable, and beautiful as she was, in Edinburgh, for the
pleasures of Paris; which pleasures brought him in time to the prison of
St. Pelagie. His wife (I will inquire after her health when I go to
Scotland) flew to his rescue. She could not procure his enlargement on
account of the greatness of his debts, but she stayed with him in the
prison, attended him in his illness, and consoled him, and reformed him
in his dying moments. She has placed here a modest tomb upon his grave.
If you hear any one speak ill of a woman, have him taken out and fifty
lashes given him on my account. I will settle all the costs and damages
at the Common Pleas.
We are now upon the summit. This site is unrivalled in beauty.
Montroye, Sêvres, Meudon, Mount Calvary, and St. Cloud, are spread
before us in the distant prospect. The eye, too, rests upon the green
fields and flowery pastures of Montreuil, and forests of Vincennes; and
at our feet is that great miracle of the world, Paris; its gilded
towers, domes, and palaces, glittering in the sun; and the frequent
hearse is bringing up its daily contribution of the inhabitants. It is
near the close of a fine day of autumn. The yellow leaf detached from
its branch, comes lingering and flutters towards the earth, and is
trodden upon by the passers by; others on the same branch are yet green,
or tinged with the blight of the first frosts.
That Xerxes, in contemplating his multitudinous legions, should weep
over the prospect of their mortality, he being on the very errand of
killing men, seems to me a notable absurdity; but that I, who leave them
to die just as they please, should weep a little, in a place so
favourable to such emotions, would be reasonable enough. While I stood
here yesterday and looked down upon this hive of human beings; listened
to the hum of its many voices, and saw the silent earth open to receive
all this life and animation: when I looked upon the many graves of my
own countrymen here, and reflected that to-morrow--to-morrow, far from
my friends and native country, I might become one of the number! Why, I
would have wept outright, if my manhood had not interfered. After all,
such feelings were perhaps more remarkable in Xerxes; and Herodotus was
right to give him, and not me, credit with posterity. Common passions in
common men are not subjects of history; but that the “king of kings,”
who challenged mountains, and fettered oceans, and led myriads to
slaughter, should yet have his lucid intervals of humanity--this is a
matter worthy of record.
This is the choice spot of the cemetery. It is the spot distinguished
for the best society. It is covered with the richest array of tombs, and
all the arts of statuary, sculpture and architecture have employed their
best skill upon its embellishment. It is the aristocracy of the grave.
Here are the Peeresses, the Princesses, and High Mightinesses. The rich
house of Ormesson, Montausin and Montmorency, and “all the blood of all
the Howards,” are upon this Hill. “_Ici repose très haute, et très
puissante dame, Emma Coglan, Duchesse de Castries_;” and here is the
proud mausoleum of Russian Kate’s superb noblewoman, _Madame Demidoff_;
which, although in bad taste, deserves, for its richness, whole days of
admiration to itself. Not one of the cleverest of the Parisians is a
match for this fur-clad damsel of the Neva. Here, too, is Joseph, the
money changer, and other men of arithmetic; the Barings and the
Rothschilds of Père la Chaise, with winged goddesses perched upon their
tombs where ought to be Multiplication Tables. And finally ministers and
great marshals of France, all who have not been ashamed to come to the
term of life according to the due course of mortality, are buried here.
Here with images of their living features, upon pyramids that pierce the
skies,--
“Heroes in animated marble frown,
And legislators seem to think in stone.”
I thought of Washington by the way-side. I thought of Franklin at the
corner of Arch and Fifth--in the midst of a city so improved and adorned
by his genius, so honoured by his virtues, with no sculpture but the
letters of his name, no mausoleum but the grave-digger’s cell.
The monument of Foy is reared by the gratitude of the city of Paris,
with almost barbaric magnificence; “kings for such a tomb would wish to
die.” They have sculptured upon its façade the principal military events
of his life. His statue has a majestic and noble air such as becomes
the great Deputy, whose eloquence was lightning, and whose tongue was
armed with thunder. The countenance is solemn, and the arm outstretched
as if to announce some awful admonition.
Other great men, also, have monuments here, pre-eminent in splendour.
_Kellerman_, whose name recals the republican victories of Valmy and
Jemappes; _Suchet_, the oldest of the marshals; his ornaments are
Rivoli, Zurich, Genoa, Esling. Two winged _Victories_ hold a crown over
the head of _Lefebvre_, and a serpent, the symbol of immortality twines
around his sword; his trophies are Montmirail, Dantzig, the Passage of
the Rhine; and next _Jourdan_, _Serrurier_, _Davoust_, and choicer than
all, the great Duke of Tarento, the Prince of Eckmuhl, the rapacious
_Massena_. How silent! not a footstep is heard of all those who rushed
to the battle.
These military men outdo by far, in the splendour of their monuments,
all the other classes.--Ceres and Bacchus, on account of the pure,
universal and durable benefits they had conferred upon mankind, were
raised to the rank of supreme divinities, says Plutarch, but Hercules,
and Theseus, and the other heroes were placed only in the rank of
demi-gods, because their services were transitory, and intermixed with
the evils of war. The French have reversed this wisdom of the Greeks in
Père la Chaise.
But, indeed, if they would snatch a little of their fame from the
oblivious grave, there is scarce any other way left; they have so spoilt
the trade of glory, by competition. Why, Bonaparte used to send, of
these heroes, whole bulletins to Paris weekly; and in Great Britain
there are no longer ale-houses, and sign-posts to hang them upon;
Smiths, Auchmuties, Abercrombies, and Wellingtons;--memory has a surfeit
of their names. Human veneration is not infinite, and it is expanded
till, like the circle upon the stream, it terminates in naught. They who
lived before Agamemnon will soon have as good a chance as their
successors; Werter will be as good a hero as Cato, and the Red Rover as
Lord Nelson.
In the early ages, when events were rare, and men had scarce any thing
to do but live their nine hundred years, heroes had some chance to be
preserved. They could transmit even their mummied bodies to posterity;
but with us, loaded as we are with all this biography, all this history,
besides what science and letters are daily imposing upon us--with us,
who come here to Père la Chaise at threescore, to expect such advantage
is unreasonable. The truth is, we cannot get along under the accumulated
load, and we must sacrifice a part for the safety of the rest of the
crew. We must heave a few Massenas and Lord Wellingtons overboard. Ought
I not to say a word in this paragraph of the unfortunate Ney? He is
buried here, like his fellow martyr, Labedoyere, at the feet of the
Suchets. A single cypress is all that grows over the “bravest of the
brave!” Read; “_çi git le Marechal Ney, Duc d’Elchingen, Prince de la
Moscowa_: Decédé! * * * _le 7 December, 1815_. I humbly take my leave of
the Rivolis, and the Wagrams.”
Here is a most beautiful tomb of a lady surmounted by an image of
Silence, her finger on her lip. Does it intimate the lady could keep a
secret? Oh, no, it admonishes other ladies to hold their tongues. This
one is _all_ French. “_Ici repose Georgina, fille de_ MADEMOISELLE
_Mars_.” She adds, _Gardez vos larmes pour sa mère_. Whoever loves
Thalia, and the Graces will not disobey the admonition. And now let me
introduce you to _Bouffleur_, the _fleur des chevaliers_; to _Delille_,
who went down to posterity behind Virgil and Milton; and to _Bernardin
de St. Pierre_, of whom one forgets to remember only Paul and the
delicious Virginia. Here, too, is _Laplace_, allotted his six feet like
the rest. _Eheu! Quid prodest?_ and _Fourcroy_, undergoing one of his
own experiments. In the centre of all these is _Molière_ himself. They
should have left room beside him for Miss Mars, his best commentary--if,
in spite of time, she should chance ever to die. Here, too, is _Talma_,
and _Mademoiselle Raucourt_ immortal for feigning others’ passions, and
_Lafontaine_, for telling other people’s tales. He has no occasion to
think any thing new, who can dress others’ thoughts to such advantage. I
observed also a few learned ladies, Madame Guizot, Dufresnoy, and above
all, Madame _Cottin_. Are you not sorry she died at twenty-eight, when
so many fools never die at all. It is plain, Providence does not trouble
itself about what we call human greatness; or genius would not perish
thus in its infancy, and so many glorious and manly enterprises would
not die in the hatching. Virgil would have lived till the completion of
his Æneid; Apelles would have put the finishing hand upon his Venus. I
regret that I must pass with only a nod of recognition, Palissot,
Mercier, Millevoye, Guinguené, David the painter, and even the elegant,
the witty, and profligate Beaumarchais. Who can pass without a sigh the
grave of Lavallette? His head was stripped of its hair, and prepared for
the guillotine, when he was saved by his wife. Her agitation, and
excessive terror lest he should be retaken, affected her brain, and she
went mad. Her madness is of a calm and melancholy kind; she sits whole
hours in meditation, and has not spoken a word these several years. She
is lodged in a _maison de santé_ near Paris.
I strolled awhile amongst the “temporary cessions,” the graves of the
poor. There are no trees here, nor artificial tombs. A border of
boxwood, and sometimes a wire wicker work, with a wooden cross, is all
their decoration. I read the inscriptions upon the crosses.
---- Pierre Robin
Age de 67 ans
Unes des victimes du 28 Juillet, 1830.
By the side in the same wicker enclosure:
Ici repose une victime _inconnu_, du 28 Julliet, 1830.
A little tri-coloured flag was waving between them.