PÈRE-LACHAISE
ARRONDISSEMENT XX. (MÉNILMONTANT)
The lower end of the long Rue de Belleville, its odd-number side in
arrondissement XIX, went in olden days by the name Rue des
Courtilles--Inn Street. Inns, cabarets, popular places of amusement
stood door by door all along its course. Here, as in arrondissement XIX,
we find on every side old houses and vestiges of the past, but of no
particular interest beyond the quaintness of their aspect. Rue Pelleport
began in the eighteenth century as an avenue encircling the park of
Ménilmontant. In the grounds surrounding the reservoirs we come upon a
tomb, a modern gravestone, covering the remains of a municipal
functionary whose dying wish was to be buried on his own estate.
Rue Haxo, crossing Rue Belleville at No. 278 and running up into
arrondissement XIX, is of tragic memory. Opening out of it at No. 85 we
see the Villa des Otages. There the Commune sat in 1871, there the fate
of the hostages was decided; there on the 26th May, 1871, fifty-two of
those unhappy prisoners were slain. The Jesuits owned the property till
its sale a few years ago. They bought and carried away the _grilles_ and
whatever else was transportable from the cells where the victims had
been shut up.
Rue Ménilmontant, running parallel to Rue de Belleville, dates from the
seventeenth century, when it was a country road leading to the
thirteenth-century hamlet Mesnil Mantems, later Mesnil Montant. The land
there belonged in great part to the abbey St-Antoine and to the priory
of Ste-Croix de la Bretonnerie; a château de Ménilmontant was built,
under Louis XIV, where in the wide-stretching grounds we see the
reservoirs. At Nos. 155 and 157 we see old pavilions surrounded by
gardens. The eighteenth-century house, No. 145, was in the nineteenth
century taken by a society calling itself the St-Simoniens--some forty
men who had decided to live together and have all things in common. They
did not remain together long. No. 119 is the school directed by the
Sœurs St-Vincent de Paul. At No. 101 we look down Rue des Cascades
which till the middle of last century was a country lane: leading out of
it is the old Rue de Savies, recording the ancient name of the
district--Savies, i.e. _montagne sauvage_--wild mountain--a name changed
later to Portronville (rather a mouthful), then to its euphonious
present name Belleville. At its summit is an ancient fountain set there
in long-past ages for the use of the monks of St-Martin of Cluny, and
for the Knights-Templar; another may be seen in the grounds of No. 17.
On the Place de Ménilmontant we see the well-built modern church
Notre-Dame-de-la-Croix, on its northern side the old Rue and passage
Eupatoria. The quaint Rue de la Mare, a country road in the seventeenth
century, and Rue des Couronnes have interesting old passages running
into them.
Passing down Rue des Pyrénées, connected on either side with short
old-time streets and passages, we come to the Square Gambetta, often
called Square Père-Lachaise, and the immense Paris cemetery, the great
point of interest of the 20th arrondissement. The site was known in
long-past days as the Champ de l’Evêque--the bishop’s field. It was
presently put to a very unecclesiastical use, for a rich grocer bought
the land and built thereon a _folie_, i.e. an extravagant mansion. In
the seventeenth century the Jesuits bought the property and named it
Mont-Louis. Louis XIV paid a visit to the Jesuits there and subsequently
bought the estate and gave it to his confessor, Père Lachaise. When Père
Lachaise died the Jesuits regained the property, held it till the
Revolution, when it was seized by the State and became the possession of
the Municipality. Passing along the avenues and alleys of this vast,
silent city on the hill-side, we see tombs of every possible description
and style, wonderful monuments and mortuary chapels, some very
beautiful, others ...! and a huge crematorium. Men and women of many
nations and of many varying creeds are gathered there. Seen on the eve
of All Saints’ Day or the day following, when fresh flowers are on every
grave, lamps burning in almost every tombstone chapel, the relatives and
the friends of the dead crowding in reverent attitude along its paths,
the scene is singularly impressive.
On its north-east boundary we find the tragic Mur des Fédérés, the wall
against which the insurgents were shot after the Commune in 1871.
Blood-red scarves, blood-red wreaths mark the graves there, and we see
the names of many who had no graves on that spot chalked up against that
tragic wall.
[Illustration: LE MUR DES FÉDÉRÉS]
On the south side of the cemetery, running eastward, we turn into the
old Rue de Bagnolet, the road leading to the village of the name. Old
houses line this street and the streets adjoining it, and half-way up
its incline on the little Place St-Blaise we see the ancient church
St-Germain de Charonne, dating from the eleventh century. An inscription
on a wall within tells us Germain, the busy bishop of Auxerre, first met
Geneviève of Nanterre here, and tradition says the future patron saint
of Paris took her vows on the spot. There was an oratory on the site in
the fifth century or little later. The eleventh-century edifice was
rebuilt in the fifteenth century, but we still see some of the blackened
walls of the earlier structure. The _chevet_, i.e. the chancel-end, was
destroyed in the wars of the Fronde. We see, distinctly traced, the
space it occupied bounded by the Mur des Sœurs, against which in
long-gone days were no doubt stalls for the nuns of a neighbouring
convent. Some ancient tombstones, too, are there, once within the
chancel. Mounting the broad steps we enter the old church to find
curious old pillars, ancient inscriptions, coats of arms, and in one
chapel a little good old glass.
Making our way to the little cemetery of Charonne behind, we find in its
centre a grass-grown space once the _fosse commune_ of the pits into
which the _guillotinés_ were flung in Revolution days. Beyond, near the
boundary wall, we see a railed-in tomb, surmounted by the figure of a
man in Louis XVIII costume--Bègue, Robespierre’s private secretary. The
Revolution over, his chief dead, the man whose hand had prepared for
signature so many tragic documents withdrew to the rural district of
Charonne, beyond the Paris bounds, led a secluded, peaceful life,
cultivated his bit of land and set about preparing for his exit from
this earth by designing his own tomb. He sat for the bronze statue we
see here, and had the iron railing made to show all the implements of
Revolutionary torture with which he was familiar, the wheel that worked
the guillotine, the _tenailles_, etc....!
Higher up towards Bagnolet we come to a vestige of the ancient Château,
a pavilion Louis XV, forming part of the modern Hospice Debrousse.