readily obtained; but their insecurity, resulting in a number of
accidents, has recently prevented the authorities from opening these
gloomy recesses to the public more than once annually,—usually
about the first of October,—when a few persons are permitted, after
obtaining tickets from the inspector general, to accompany him in his
subterranean tour. The first time I visited Paris I was extremely
anxious to wander through the Catacombs; but finding many obstacles in
my way, and being much occupied otherwise, I quitted the city without
gratifying my curiosity. I returned, however, ere long, and was so
diligent in prosecuting my purpose that one pleasant autumn morning,
in company with a dozen strangers, I descended from the garden of
the city custom-house at the Barrière d’Enfer to explore the stony
chambers of the dead.
We had provided ourselves with wax tapers, which we lighted, each
of us carrying one, before we went down a circular flight of some
one hundred steps leading to the dismal galleries running in every
direction, and containing the ghastly remains of millions of our
fellow-creatures, once as merry and ambitious, as fond and foolish,
as hopeful and as vain, as any of us are to-day. At the bottom of the
staircase a guide placed himself at our head, and, observing that our
tapers were all in good order, took the lead, after exhorting us to
keep together, and on no account, if we valued our lives, to attempt
to explore any other than the main avenues through which we were to
pass.
The Catacombs hold the victims of the different revolutions so
frequent in Paris; and now, moreover, the common graves (_les fosses
communes_) in the three principal cemeteries of Montmartre, Mont
Parnasse and Père la Chaise, are emptied every five years, and the
plebeian relics consigned to the Catacombs, to make room for more
bodies in those populous burying-grounds. Thus are the great vaults
steadily and rapidly increasing their lifeless hosts, and adding to
the horrors of a region necessarily horrible from the first.
[Sidenote: THE FIRST OF THE PASSAGES.]
[Sidenote: YAWNING PITS AND CAVERNS.]
Several hundred yards from the base of the steps which we had
descended is an octagonal vestibule, and over it an inscription in
Latin to this effect: “Beyond these boundaries repose those who await
a blessed immortality.” We passed through a door leading into a long
gallery lined with bones from the floor to the roof; the arm, leg, and
thigh-bones being closely and regularly piled together in front, their
uniformity relieved by three rows of skulls at equal distances, while
behind these the smaller bones are thrown, regardless of arrangement
of any kind. The gallery conducts to several apartments resembling
chapels, called Tombs of the Revolutions, and Tombs of the Victims,
because they hold the relics of those who had perished in popular
insurrections against existing authority. I had noticed, before
reaching the vestibule, and what may be considered the Catacombs
proper, that the passage was very narrow,—only two persons being able
to walk abreast therein,—and little more than six feet in height. This
passage soon made a sharp turn, and at the corner the names of the
streets directly above were cut into the stone, and two black arrows
painted upon it, one pointing to the entrance of the vaults, and the
other to the great charnel-house we were about to explore. We were in
chambers of hewn-out rock. Rock was above us, below us, and on every
side. The walls were very damp, the water in many places dripping
through what might be termed the ceiling, in which were so many cracks
and crevices that it seemed as if the walls might tumble and bury
us at any moment. Two or three of my companions grew very nervous
as they perceived about them such alarming signs of insecurity, and
expressed the wish that they had not undertaken what they declared
to be a foolhardy enterprise. As I walked along, I saw at different
turnings of the passage what appeared to be deep, yawning pits; and
feeling a curiosity to examine them, I stopped and stretched my taper
over the side. Appearances were not deceitful. The deep pits were
really there—dark, awful, and impenetrable. I could not help thinking
how easy it would be for any one who should get lost and become
bewildered, to stumble into one of those fearful holes and dash his
brains out. Even such a dreary death would be infinitely preferable to
the long agony of confinement in, without any hope of release from,
such a place of horrors. While I was speculating on the possibility
of the situation, the little procession got quite beyond me, and I
was aroused from my gloomy reverie by the echoing voice of the guide
urging the members of our party to keep close together. I hurried
forward just in time to see the door of the vestibule open, and to go
in with the rest.
The Catacombs are laid out very much like the old quarters of Paris,
the different avenues being named after the streets above them, and
the principal buildings overhead being indicated on the walls. It
seemed very strange that certain famous structures, with which I am
very familiar, should be only eighty or a hundred feet from where we
were walking, as those sepulchral caverns appeared hundreds of miles
away from the bright and beautiful city we had quitted half an hour
before. Nothing can be more dismal and depressing than the Catacombs,
with their miles and miles of human bones and skulls confronting you
wherever you turn, and seeming to dance and grin as the light and the
shadow of the passing tapers fall upon them.
How easily we are cheated by the imagination! I could almost have
sworn, as I hurried by, that I saw some of the thigh-bones move to
and fro, and the jaws of the skulls open and shut, and extend, in
ghastly grimace, a repulsive welcome from the dead to the living, who
would soon be no more than those hideous remains. There is a certain
fascination, however, I must confess, in the sombre, subterranean
city. The parade and panoply of grim mortality held me like a spell,
and again and again I found myself far in the rear of the solemn
excursionists. I liked to fall behind and watch the thick shadows
which gave way before and closed in behind them, and listen to the
hollow and dreary echoes of their voices murmuring through the mighty
vaults. I fancied the babbling company to be a crew of resurgent
spirits, whose duty it was to visit the cemeteries of the globe, and
awake the dead to judgment. They had a certain weird semblance as they
flitted on in the dim distance, and their tones came back to me as
if they had fallen from tongues long silent in the grave. The fancy
pleased me, and I indulged it, and the kindred fancy that the heaps of
bones were animated, until, sometimes, so strong were the suggestions
of the place, I really confounded the living with the dead.
Once, in going by an avenue running to the right, I yielded to a
temptation to step into it, to look at an extraordinary heap of bones.
This did not occupy more than thirty seconds,—at least, it did not
appear longer,—and yet, when I stepped back into the broader passage
(the main avenues in the Catacombs are much wider than those I have
mentioned outside the vestibule), I found, to my utter consternation
and horror, that my companions had left me; I could not see the light
of their tapers, nor could I hear the least echo of their steps or
voices.
[Sidenote: LOST IN THE CATACOMBS.]
[Sidenote: FEELINGS OF HORROR.]
Lost in the Catacombs! How often I had imagined it! and now, indeed,
it had become a terrible reality. Horror almost paralyzed me for
the moment. I seemed to be all nerve and brain, and these thrilled
and throbbed so wildly that I was forced to lean against the rock
for support. I thought I should go mad, for there was something in
the very idea of being shut up in that awful cavern, in the awful
silence and awful darkness, doomed to perish by inches, every hour
expanding to an age, which rendered any other means of death blissful
by contrast. My head swam, and I believed I was about to swoon, when,
feeling that to do so was to be destroyed, I roused my will and almost
involuntarily sprang forward. My movement was so sudden that my taper
was extinguished, and an inky blackness fell upon me like a pall. The
horror of my situation was a hundred-fold increased. If I could have
lighted my little candle again, I should have been almost happy;
and yet, a few seconds before, I had regarded myself as the most
miserable of mortals. My brain seemed to be absolutely bursting, and
my heart forcing itself into my throat. I was conscious of a sense of
suffocation, and I was not sure that the rocky walls were not pressing
together to crush me. I remember having an anxious longing that they
might do so, and end the agony I was enduring. I frankly admit I had
never known before what human suffering can be. I had not supposed
myself capable of such mental anguish; it was ten thousand times
more, and worse, than death—an indefinable and overwhelming dread
of something which might not be named, but that could be pictured
with miraculous power. I had confronted death often, in sickness, in
catastrophe, in battle, on land and water, by falling, and by fire,
and the so-called King of Terrors had not shown himself half so
terrible as I had anticipated. But then and there, in those silent
and rayless Catacombs, I was unnerved, overpowered, and horrified,
by a crushing dread of the unknown. Every moment was a month. Every
feeling was a minister of horror. Exactly what I did I shall never
know, though I seem to have a misty recollection that I strove to
kill myself by dashing my head against the rocks. For some time I was
incapable of determining my conduct; and then, with all my exquisite
sense of mental pain, I was aware of hurrying rapidly through the
thick darkness.
How long this continued I know not; but of a sudden I saw beyond me a
flash of light like the aurora in the far northern sky. Was I really
mad? Was I dreaming? Was I dead, and waking from the sleep of death? I
rubbed my eyes, I pinched myself, I tried to scream, but I could not
make a sound. Burning as my throat was, and all on fire as I seemed
from head to foot, my voice froze as I sought to give it utterance.
Still, I was not deceived. There _was_ a light before me, and as I
dashed on involuntarily, I saw that it proceeded from the tapers of my
companions, whom I had nearly overtaken. The reaction of my feelings
almost prostrated me. My heart beat like a tilt hammer, my breath was
well nigh spent, my pulses leaped with fever, and yet I felt that my
face must be blanched, and I should not have been surprised if my hair
had turned gray.
In a few seconds I had joined my party and relighted my taper. Nobody
knew through what a crisis I had passed, nor did I say anything about
it except to remark, casually, that I had extinguished my candle by
letting it fall. From inquiries I learned that from the moment I had
missed my companions until I had rejoined them, not more than two
minutes had elapsed; and still, by the measure of my mind, I had lived
through months of pain.
If I had not already known it, I should have been convinced then that
time can be reckoned only by feeling; that no clock can keep the
record of the heart; and that the soul strikes hours every moment of
its existence.
[Sidenote: ADVICE TO EXPLORERS.]
I would advise those who may feel inclined to go through the Catacombs
to take a box of wax matches in their pocket, and a little luncheon
besides, so that if their taper be blown out, or they be lost, they
may at least be relieved from the terror of absolute darkness and
immediate starvation. When persons are missed down there, a search is
immediately made for them, and nobody would feel half so uncomfortable
while he had light and food as he would in the midst of gloom, and
haunted by the necessity of dining on himself.
The moist and grave-like odor which fills the Catacombs, added to the
images of death on every side, intensifies their sepulchral aspect,
and makes those wandering in the ghastly haunts seem to themselves
only half alive. The faces of those with me did not appear any
more natural than their voices, and all of us had a certain taint
of the tomb. Even the tapers flickered and sank in the unwholesome
atmosphere, as though even fire, which rages in the centre of the
earth, could not support itself in that dusky Golgotha.
In some places the skulls have been arranged in the form of crosses
and set into the wall—probably by the priests of Paris, who, like
all their tribe, delight in symbols and devices coupling death and
religion; forgetting that the creed they preach declares there is no
death, that true religion leads to eternal life. Monks of all ages—and
there are many monks who have never taken orders—have been little more
than sacerdotal sextons, revelling in disease and decay, lamentation
and funerals, as if Nature had set their spirits to the music of
bereavement and woe.
Bones, bones, bones! Skulls, skulls, skulls! I can well believe six
millions of mortal remains have been deposited in the Catacombs, which
look as if they might have been the graveyard of the globe since
the dawn of creation. They furnish the most extensive bone-yard I
have ever visited. They do not contain nearly so many dead, in all
probability, as the Catacombs of Rome; but on the Seine the dead are
exhibited to much more advantage than on the Tiber. The French make
the most of everything, and their osseous arrangement and display are
not equalled anywhere.
[Sidenote: FONDNESS FOR SOUVENIRS.]
Americans have often been laughed at for their fondness for relics,
and very deservedly too; for they seek mementos in all places, and
under every variety of circumstances. I should never have suspected
any of my countrymen of a disposition to deprive the Catacombs of
any of their horrors; and yet several of them actually carried
off shin and thigh bones in order to recall the pleasure they had
experienced in Paris. One fellow—I think he was a medical student
from Boston—tried to secure a whole skull; but as he could not very
conveniently get it into his pocket, he was reluctantly forced to
leave it behind. Possibly he was an admirer of the first Napoleon,
and anxious to obtain a souvenir of Bonaparte. I presume I have met
men who, if they were given time and opportunity, would despoil that
horrid vault of a very large proportion of its revolting treasures.
During our ramble we encountered a well of pure water enclosed by
a wall. In it are a number of gold-fish that manage to live by
some mysterious means, though the guide informed us that they did
not spawn. The well comes from a spring which some of the workmen
discovered while making repairs many years ago, and gave it the name
of the Spring of Forgetfulness, afterwards changed to the Fountain of
the Good Samaritan. The water is declared to be sweet; but I should
need to be extremely thirsty before drinking what would seem infected
with death.
[Sidenote: MAXIMS FOR VISITORS.]
The Roman church, always on the alert to point morals and preach
sermons, has filled the Catacombs at convenient intervals with
inscriptions designed to be impressive. Some of these are,—
“Happy is he whose hour of death is ever before his eyes!”
“Be not proud or boastful, O mortal; for this is the end of the
loftiest ambition and the highest glory!”
“Death recognizes not rank—in his eyes the prince and the peasant are
the same!”
“Come, all ye busy worldlings into this silent retreat, and listen to
the solemn voice that rises from the tomb!”
“Remember, O man, the mercies of thy God, and remember He will call
thee when thou least expectest to hear His voice!”
“The grave is dark; but the paths that lead from it are, to the
righteous, strewn with eternal flowers!”
“Mock not the lowly, for in the courts of Heaven the lowly may stand
before thee, shorn of thy worldly pride!”
No doubt there is a great deal of truth in these maxims; but in spite
of them, and many more like them, death has never been rendered
very attractive to persons enjoying good health and a fair degree
of prosperity. Death bears about the same relation to life that
the Catacombs do to Paris; and I have never yet known any man or
woman who would willingly quit the gay Boulevards or the delightful
Champs Elysées to walk in the bone-lined and noisome vaults of the
subterranean city.
We passed only through the main avenues of the Catacombs,—there is
very little variety in them,—and after spending nearly three hours
underground, having supped full of material horrors, we reached
another staircase, and once more ascended to the light of day, and the
blessed sunshine. I had no idea where we were, and I was somewhat
surprised to find that we came out nearly a mile and a half from where
we had gone down. The charming capital never, I think, appeared quite
so charming as it did on that delicious afternoon when I returned from
death and decay to the living and the loving, to the comforts and the
joys, of the upper world.
[Sidenote: AN ENGLISHMAN’S OPINIONS.]
While we were in that vast subterranean graveyard, I was struck by
the different effect it produced upon different persons in our party.
An Englishman, who was extremely anxious to “do the thing, you know,”
was superlatively disgusted after he had passed the vestibule, and
declared the Catacombs the “beastliest place” he had ever seen. He
grumbled like Vesuvius before eruption, and swore that the French
authorities ought to be exposed for permitting the subjects of Her
Majesty to thrust themselves into such a “bloody” hole. He even
suggested that it was a French trick to get rid of certain true and
noble Britons, and, of course, threatened to write to the Times on the
subject. He was constantly predicting that the rock overhead would
tumble down and bury us all, and really seemed uncomfortable because
something horrible did not happen. After he had gone half way through,
he wanted to go back, and when he had reached the end of the route,
he was much dissatisfied that we hadn’t done a great deal more. He
fretted and fumed every minute of the three hours, and did his best to
render every one as nervous and discontented as himself.
Several Americans ran all sorts of saws on the Englishman, and
prophesied some terrible calamity at every step, saying they never
would have thought of coming into the gloomy region unless they had
expected that a fair proportion of the excursionists would be killed.
Two of my countrymen insisted that they had made their wills before
they had left their hotel, and a third averred that he had a vial of
prussic acid and a revolver in his pocket for the express purpose of
committing suicide, if he should be lost in the cavernous windings.
He asked the Briton if he had not taken the same precaution, and
pronounced him superlatively reckless because he had not, explaining
the advantage of self-destruction over a lingering and horrible death.
John Bull, remarkable to relate, had not the slightest suspicion that
the “Yankees” were poking fun at him. On the contrary, he regarded
all their jests as solemnly sincere, and asserted that it was exactly
like our nation never to enjoy anything that was not accompanied by a
bloody murder of some sort.
A young Italian, who was quite good-looking, and far more conscious
of the fact than anybody else, endured martyrdom in the Catacombs
from quite another cause. He was very carefully and daintily dressed,
and appeared to consider dust or soil upon his clothes as a sovereign
evil. He was the dandiest of dandies, and the most fastidious of
fools. He looked rather blank, as I had noticed, when we first began
the descent of the circular staircase in the Custom House garden. He
was in advance, and before we had gone down a dozen steps, I observed
a number of large drops falling from the blazing tapers above him upon
his new hat and coat. Some kind friend pointed these out to him, and
he actually turned pale with wrath and chagrin.
[Sidenote: INCONVENIENCES OF A VISIT.]
“Who could have done this? Such conduct is disgraceful! I did not
come here to have my clothes ruined. I wish the Catacombs were in
the bottomless pit.” These and other phrases he ejaculated in choice
Tuscan, which very few understood, but which those who did understand
enjoyed not a little. After the marring of his wardrobe, there could
be no pleasure for him. If he had been shown all the wonders of
the world, he could not have forgotten his tarnished garments. His
misfortunes followed him. The water dropped through the crevices upon
his august person, and as he was unusually tall, he crushed his hat
every few minutes against the overhanging rock, which struck oaths
out of him as steel strikes fire out of flint. I fancied sometimes
that he envied the skeletons he passed, because they had no clothes to
spoil. Long before he had finished his underground journey, his beauty
of person and raiment was sadly injured, and I am confident that he
will remember the Catacombs, and curse them for the harm they did his
garments, till the end of his days.
[Sidenote: INQUISITIVENESS OF AN AMERICAN.]
A native of Maine entertained us by inquiring constantly of the guide,
who could not speak a word of English, while the New Englander had
not the least knowledge of French, in regard to the probable cost of
the Catacombs, and whether they paid as an investment. He was very
desirous to know, also, whose skull this one might be, and whose that,
evidently under the impression that all the monarchs and historic
characters of France were buried there. Our guide, too polite not
to pretend to comprehend the inquisitive fellow, gabbled away in
bewildering generalities. The Maine man asseverated again and again,
that he would give five dollars to know what the Frenchman said; and
therefore I assumed to tell him. I informed him, though the Catacombs
had cost five hundred millions of dollars, that they paid a larger
interest than any property in the country; that they were owned by the
Rothschilds, who received one hundred dollars from the government for
every skull put into the vaults; and that, as there were six millions
of them, he could calculate the profits. “By thunder!” he replied; “no
wonder those old Jews are so rich. I never knew before how they made
all their money. I wonder if a chap couldn’t buy a little Catacomb
stock.”
That mighty charnel-house is not without its tragic history. A number
of persons have been lost there in spite of all the precautions
against accidents; but these have been very rare of late, because so
few persons could obtain admission.
A few years ago, a newly-married couple arrived in Paris from the
provinces, having gone to the city on their bridal tour. It was their
first visit to the capital, and they were naturally desirous to see
its lions. The bride had heard a great deal of the Catacombs, and
would not be satisfied without exploring them, albeit her husband
endeavored to dissuade her from such a dismal enterprise. She was
bent on going, and so they went together. He kept close to her side,
constantly fearing she might be lost. He admitted that he had a
presentiment respecting her, and sure enough it was realized.
[Sidenote: AN UNHAPPY HONEYMOON.]
They had been in the Catacombs something more than an hour, when,
having stopped to examine a curious skull, he called for her to look
at it, and discovered, to his horror, that she was missing. There
were nearly two hundred in the party, and nobody had observed when
or where she had disappeared. They all retraced their steps, entered
the adjoining passages, and shouted themselves hoarse to attract her
attention; but all in vain. Not the least vestige of her could be
discovered. The bridegroom was beside himself with grief, declaring
that he knew she would never be found, and calling upon the rocks to
fall, and relieve him of his misery. It became necessary to drag him
from the sepulchral vault, and when this was done, he proved to be a
raving maniac. He was sent to an asylum, where such was the violence
of his paroxysms night and day, that he died of exhaustion in less
than a fortnight. Diligent search was made for the missing bride,
though to no purpose. Not the slightest clew was obtained to her
fate, and it was finally conjectured that she must have wandered into
some tortuous avenue, and fallen into one of the pits which I have
described. Such was the melancholy ending of a honeymoon before it had
fairly begun.