The cemetery of Pere Lachaise is the Westminster Abbey of Paris. Both
are the dwellings of the dead; but in one they repose in green alleys
and beneath the open sky--in the other their resting place is in the
shadowy aisle and beneath the dim arches of an ancient abbey. One is a
temple of nature; the other a temple of art. In one the soft
melancholy of the scene is rendered still more touching by the warble
of birds and the shade of trees, and the grave receives the gentle
visit of the sunshine and the shower: in the other no sound but the
passing footfall breaks the silence of the place; the twilight steals
in through high and dusky windows; and the damps of the gloomy vault
lie heavy on the heart, and leave their stain upon the moldering
tracery of the tomb.
[Footnote 1: From "Outre-Mer."]
Pere Lachaise stands just beyond the Barriere d'Aulney, on a hillside
looking toward the city. Numerous gravel walks, winding through shady
avenues and between marble monuments, lead up from the principal
entrance to a chapel on the summit. There is hardly a grave that has
not its little enclosure planted with shrubbery, and a thick mass of
foliage half conceals each funeral stone. The sighing of the wind, as
the branches rise and fall upon it--the occasional note of a bird
among the trees, and the shifting of light and shade upon the tombs
beneath have a soothing effect upon the mind; and I doubt whether any
one can enter that enclosure, where repose the dust and ashes of so
many great and good men, without feeling the religion of the place
steal over him, and seeing something of the dark and gloomy expression
pass off from the stern countenance of Death.
It was near the close of a bright summer afternoon that I visited this
celebrated spot for the first time. The first object that arrested my
attention on entering was a monument in the form of a small Gothic
chapel which stands near the entrance, in the avenue leading to the
right hand. On the marble couch within are stretched two figures,
carved in stone and drest in the antique garb of the Middle Ages. It
is the tomb of Abelard and Heloise. The history of these two
unfortunate lovers is too well known to need recapitulation; but
perhaps it is not so well known how often their ashes were disturbed
in the slumber of the grave. Abelard died in the monastery of St.
Marcel, and was buried in the vaults of the church. His body was
afterward removed to the convent of the Paraclete, at the request of
Heloise, and at her death her body was deposited in the same tomb.
Three centuries they reposed together; after which they were separated
to different sides of the church, to calm the delicate scruples of the
lady abbess of the convent. More than a century afterward they were
again united in the same tomb; and when at length the Paraclete was
destroyed, their moldering remains were transported to the church of
Nogent-sur-Seine. They were next deposited in an ancient cloister at
Paris, and now repose near the gateway of the cemetery of Pere
Lachaise. What a singular destiny was theirs! that, after a life of
such passionate and disastrous love--such sorrows, and tears, and
penitence--their very dust should not be suffered to rest quietly in
the grave!--that their death should so much resemble their life in its
changes and vicissitudes, its partings and its meetings, its
inquietudes and its persecutions!--that mistaken zeal should follow
them down to the very tomb--as if earthly passion could glimmer, like
a funeral lamp, amid the damps of the charnel house, and "even in
their ashes burn their wonted fires"!
As I gazed on the sculptured forms before me, and the little chapel
whose Gothic roof seemed to protect their marble sleep, my busy memory
swung back the dark portals of the past, and the picture of their sad
and eventful lives came up before me in the gloomy distance. What a
lesson for those who are endowed with the fatal gift of genius! It
would seem, indeed, that He who "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"
tempers also His chastisements to the errors and infirmities of a
weak and simple mind--while the transgressions of him upon whose
nature are more strongly marked the intellectual attributes of the
Deity are followed, even upon earth, by severer tokens of the Divine
displeasure. He who sins in the darkness of a benighted intellect sees
not so clearly, through the shadows that surround him, the countenance
of an offended God; but he who sins in the broad noonday of a clear
and radiant mind, when at length the delirium of sensual passion has
subsided and the cloud flits away from before the sun, trembles
beneath the searching eye of that accusing Power which is strong in
the strength of a godlike intellect. Thus the mind and the heart are
closely linked together, and the errors of genius bear with them their
own chastisement, even upon earth. The history of Abelard and Heloise
is an illustration of this truth. But at length they sleep well. Their
lives are like a tale that is told; their errors are "folded up like a
book"; and what mortal hand shall break the seal that death has set
upon them?
Leaving this interesting tomb behind me, I took a pathway to the left,
which conducted me up the hillside. I soon found myself in the deep
shade of heavy foliage, where the branches of the yew and willow
mingled, interwoven with the tendrils and blossoms of the honeysuckle.
I now stood in the most populous part of this city of tombs. Every
step awakened a new train of thrilling recollections, for at every
step my eye caught the name of some one whose glory had exalted the
character of his native land and resounded across the waters of the
Atlantic. Philosophers, historians, musicians, warriors, and poets
slept side by side around me; some beneath the gorgeous monument, and
some beneath the simple headstone. But the political intrigue, the
dream of science, the historical research, the ravishing harmony of
sound, the tried courage, the inspiration of the lyre--where are they?
With the living, and not with the dead! The right hand has lost its
cunning in the grave; but the soul, whose high volitions it obeyed,
still lives to reproduce itself in ages yet to come.
Amid these graves of genius I observed here and there a splendid
monument, which had been raised by the pride of family over the dust
of men who could lay no claim either to the gratitude or remembrance
of posterity. Their presence seemed like an intrusion into the
sanctuary of genius. What had wealth to do there? Why should it crowd
the dust of the great? That was no thoroughfare of business--no mart
of gain! There were no costly banquets there; no silken garments, nor
gaudy liveries, nor obsequious attendants! "What servants," says
Jeremy Taylor, "shall we have to wait upon us in the grave? what
friends to visit us? what officious people to cleanse away the moist
and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the
weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our funerals?"
Material wealth gives a factitious superiority to the living, but the
treasures of intellect give a real superiority to the dead; and the
rich man, who would not deign to walk the street with the starving and
penniless man of genius, deems it an honor, when death has redeemed
the fame of the neglected, to have his ashes laid beside him, and to
claim with him the silent companionship of the grave.
I continued my walk through the numerous winding paths, as chance or
curiosity directed me. Now I was lost in a little green hollow
overhung with thick-leaved shrubbery, and then came out upon an
elevation, from which, through an opening in the trees, the eye caught
glimpses of the city, and the little esplanade at the foot of the hill
where the poor lie buried. There poverty hires its grave and takes but
a short lease of the narrow house. At the end of a few months, or at
most of a few years, the tenant is dislodged to give place to another,
and he in turn to a third. "Who," says Sir Thomas Browne, "knows the
fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the
oracle of his ashes, or whither they are to be scattered?"
Yet even in that neglected corner the hand of affection had been busy
in decorating the hired house. Most of the graves were surrounded with
a slight wooden paling, to secure them from the passing footstep;
there was hardly one so deserted as not to be marked with its little
wooden cross and decorated with a garland of flowers; and here and
there I could perceive a solitary mourner, clothed in black, stooping
to plant a shrub on the grave, or sitting in motionless sorrow beside
it.
As I passed on amid the shadowy avenues of the cemetery, I could not
help comparing my own impressions with those which others have felt
when walking alone among the dwellings of the dead. Are, then, the
sculptured urn and storied monument nothing more than symbols of
family pride? Is all I see around me a memorial of the living more
than of the dead, an empty show of sorrow, which thus vaunts itself in
mournful pageant and funeral parade? Is it indeed true, as some have
said, that the simple wild flower which springs spontaneously upon the
grave, and the rose which the hand of affection plants there, are
fitter objects wherewith to adorn the narrow house? No! I feel that it
is not so! Let the good and the great be honored even in the grave.
Let the sculptured marble direct our footsteps to the scene of their
long sleep; let the chiseled epitaph repeat their names, and tell us
where repose the nobly good and wise! It is not true that all are
equal in the grave. There is no equality even there. The mere handful
of dust and ashes, the mere distinction of prince and beggar, of a
rich winding sheet and a shroudless burial, of a solitary grave and a
family vault--were this all, then, indeed it would be true that death
is a common leveler. Such paltry distinctions as those of wealth and
poverty are soon leveled by the spade and mattock; the damp breath of
the grave blots them out forever. But there are other distinctions
which even the mace of death can not level or obliterate. Can it break
down the distinction of virtue and vice? Can it confound the good with
the bad? the noble with the base? all that is truly great, and pure,
and godlike, with all that is scorned, and sinful, and degraded? No!
Then death is not a common leveler!...
Before I left the graveyard the shades of evening had fallen, and the
objects around me grown dim and indistinct. As I passed the gateway, I
turned to take a parting look. I could distinguish only the chapel on
the summit of the hill, and here and there a lofty obelisk of
snow-white marble, rising from the black and heavy mass of foliage
around, and pointing upward to the gleam of the departed sun, that
still lingered in the sky, and mingled with the soft starlight of a
summer evening.