Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

“ FOOTNOTE: "Un grand nombre de voitures de deuil et de voitures particulieres," we read in the Gazette musicals, "ont suivi jusqu'au cimetiere de l'Est, dit du Pere-Lachaise, le pompeux corbillard qui portait le corps du defunt. L'elite des artistes de Paris lui a servi de cortege. ”

“ Père Lachaise stands just beyond the Barrière 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 ”

“ The burial-ground of Père-Lachaise occupies the ancient domain of Mont-Louis, a property given to Father Lachaise by the king, and which in time became known exclusively by the name of its owner. It is for the most part an aristocratic cemetery. Although it contains monuments characterised by a solemnity befitting the idea of eternity, it is by no means the depressing, melancholy, awe-inspiring place which one might expect so vast a necropolis to be. On the one side wealth lies buried, on the other indigence. ”

“ I took the letter and read:
"Have you perhaps forgotten a poor woman who has forgotten nothing and who dies because she can not forget?
"When you receive this letter I shall be no more. Then go to the cemetery of Pére-Lachaise, tell the concierge to let you see among the newest graves one that bears on its stone the simple name 'Marie,' and when you are face to face with that grave, fall on your knees and pray." ”

“ After a most revolting account of the mode of burial of the poor in Père-Lachaise, the statement follows that "the Americans are the only people who bury their dead decently and beautifully—that is, so far as the present mode of sepulture will allow them. For beauty, extent, careful planting, picturesque views and keeping, the garden cemeteries formed within the past generation near all the principal American cities are a great advance upon anything of the kind in Europe." ”

“ His curly white hair was extremely well kept. He wore spotless white spats all the year round, and always had a flower in his button-hole: Parma violets in winter and a pale pink carnation in summer. He had one curious mania—he visited cemeteries. We frequently went together to the Père Lachaise and to his favourite Montmartre cemetery.
"The Père Lachaise," he exclaimed, "possesses the tombs of Musset, Balzac, Chopin, La Fontaine, Bizet, of your 'friends' Cuvier and Thiers, and others, but it is too fashionable, too showy.... ”

“ Death always comes before he is expected; and, from a sentiment easy to understand, the heirs usually act as if the event were impossible. For which reason, almost every one that loses father or mother, wife or child, is immediately beset by scouts that profit by the confusion caused by grief to snare others. In former days, agents for monuments used to live round about the famous cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, and were gathered together in a single thoroughfare, which should by rights have been called the Street of Tombs ”

“ The latter, the necropolis of the left bank of the Seine, is the least interesting and least visited of any of the Parisian cemeteries. The ground is quite level, and the enclosure so crowded with tombs that there is very little space left for verdure or shade. The number of distinguished dead who rest here is also less than in either Père-Lachaise or Montmartre. Previous to 1824, it received only the human débris from the hospitals and the bodies of criminals from the neighboring scaffold. ”

“ No word is said; sceptics themselves know not what they are feeling. Spanish genius alone was able to bring this untold majesty to untold griefs.
When the solemn ceremony was over, twelve men came from the six chapels and stood around the coffin to hear the song of hope which the Church intones for the Christian soul before the human form is buried. Then, each man entered alone a mourning-coach; Jacquet and Monsieur Desmarets took the thirteenth; the servants followed on foot. An hour later, they were at the summit of that cemetery popularly called Pere-Lachaise. ”

“ Not tombs nor temples nor sanctuaries are safe from the profane and polluting feet of the buzzing plague of them. You journey miles away from this spot to the great cemetery of Pere Lachaise. You trudge past seemingly unending, constantly unfolding miles of monuments and mausoleums ”

“ In Paris, unless on very exceptional occasions, or when some famous man has died a natural death, the crowd that gathers about a funeral diminishes by degrees as the procession approaches Pere-Lachaise. ”

“ I do not remember any spot, either in church or churchyard, where the unequal dignity of the memorials raised above the dust which lies so very equally beneath them all is shown in a manner to strike the heart so forcibly as it does at Père Lachaise. Here, a shovelful of weeds have hardly room to grow; and there rises a costly pile, shadowing its lowly neighbour. On this side the narrow path, sorrow is wrapped round and hid from notice by the very poverty that renders it more bitter ”

“ For certain, directly Bazouge arrived, a smell of death seemed to permeate the partition. One might have thought oneself lodging against the Pere Lachaise cemetery, in the midst of the kingdom of moles. He was frightful, the animal, continually laughing all by himself, as though his profession enlivened him. Even when he had finished his rumpus and had laid himself on his back, he snored in a manner so extraordinary that it caused the laundress to hold her breath. For hours she listened attentively, with an idea that funerals were passing through her neighbor’s room. ”

“ Nothing is wanting to complete the harmony, the murmur of the world of men and the idyllic quiet of solitude, the voices of a million human creatures and the voice of God. There lies a whole capital beneath the peaceful cypresses of Pere-Lachaise.
The landscape lay in all its beauty, sparkling in the spring sunlight, as I stood looking out over it one morning, my back against a huge elm-tree that flung its yellow flowers to the wind. ”

“ She had read in some paper a dismal tale of some undertaker who took home with him coffin after coffin—children's coffins—in order to make one trip to the cemetery suffice. When she heard his step the whole corridor was pervaded to her senses with the odor of dead humanity.
She would as lief have resided at Père-Lachaise and watched the moles at their work. The man terrified her; his incessant laughter dismayed her. She talked of moving but at the same time was reluctant to do so, for there was a strange fascination about Bazonge after all. ”

“ You do doubt it? Go to Père-Lachaise: twenty paces to the left of the tomb of General Foy, you will find a simple stone, surrounded with flowers always well kept. Upon the stone you can read the name of my heroine graven in large characters: ARSÈNE GUILLOT, and, by bending over that tomb, you will discover, if the rain has not already effaced it, a line traced with a pencil, in very fine writing: "Poor Arsène! she prays for us." ”

“ The end came in Paris with the close of the century he had done so much to adorn. He died on November 30, 1900, and was buried, by his faithful friend, Robert Ross, in a grave which was leased for a few years in Bagneux Cemetery.
The kindness of Robert Ross to Oscar Wilde is one of the most touching things in literary history. The time has not yet come to speak of it at length, but the facts are known and will not always be withheld. Owing largely to his efforts, a permanent resting-place was secured a few years ago in the most famous cemetery in France, the Père Lachaise. ”

“ When they reached it they found (as at the doors of museums, galleries, and coach-offices) ciceroni, who proposed to guide them through the labyrinth of Pere-Lachaise. Neither Jules nor Jacquet could have found the spot where Clemence lay. Ah, frightful anguish! They went to the lodge to consult the porter of the cemetery. The dead have a porter, and there are hours when the dead are “not receiving.” It is necessary to upset all the rules and regulations of the upper and lower police to obtain permission to weep at night, in silence and solitude, over the grave where a loved one lies. ”

“ Great hopes are entertained that the rains will check the conflagration. A few shells have fallen in the Rue de la Paix. Constant arrests or executions are being made of women who throw incendiary matter down the cellar gratings. Many bodies have been exhumed from under shattered houses, some with large sums of money on them. News reaches us that troops of the Line have occupied Ménilmontant and the Cemetery of Père-Lachaise. The Federals had declared Père-Lachaise to be their last stronghold, and that they were prepared to defend it tomb by tomb. ”

“ All the flowers freshly planted are carefully watered; each one employs his best taste in setting forth the resting-place of the dear absent ones. Regret makes itself friendly and gracious; grief itself takes on a little coquetry. Nothing is more delicate and more moving than this annual pilgrimage of the people of Paris to these places of eternal repose."
Many of the details gathered by M. Havard in the course of his careful inspection of these respect-compelling enclosures are worthy of preservation. In Père-Lachaise, for example, it is well not to be too credulous. ”

“ I want to walk to straighten my legs.”
And to avoid these invitations, which were beginning to embarrass him, he took an almost deserted pathway, one that proved too deserted indeed, for hardly had he taken a step along it before he regretted it. Ever since entering the cemetery he had had but one preoccupation—the fear of finding himself face to face with Jansoulet, whose violence of temper he knew, and who might well forget the sacredness of the place, and even in Pere Lachaise renew the scandal of the Rue Royale. ”

“ The demand became large; an improved furnace was soon devised, the unclaimed bodies at the hospitals and the remains at the dissecting rooms being cremated there, besides a large number of embryos. In 1906 the number, including the last-named class, was 6906. The total number of incinerations at Père Lachaise down to December 31st, 1906 (including both classes) was 86,962; but the employment of cremation for the purposes named has deterred a resort to it by many. Had a separate establishment been organized for the public, its success would have been greater. ”

“ Read, search, find one appeal to murder, to pillage, a single cruel line in all these Communard journals excited by the battle, and then compare them with the Versaillese papers, demanding fusillades en masse as soon as the troops shall have vanquished Paris.
Let us follow those catafalques that are being taken up the Rue de la Roquette, and enter with them into the Père Lachaise cemetery. All those who die for Paris are entombed with obsequies in the great resting-place. The Commune has claimed the honour of paying for their funerals ”

“ Those who love history for its romance, those who have been touched by the tale of the lovers, will gaze with interest on these two faces; and if they are not satisfied they may go to Père Lachaise to continue their devotions in presence of the monument to their memory. If, however, they should have consulted M. Edouard Fournier beforehand, they will have been warned that the medallions of the Quai Napoleon and the statues of the tomb are anything but authentic. “The medallions,” says this unerring critic, “in costumes of the time of Henry IV. represent lovers of the{157} twelfth century. ”

“ It is a very interesting sight, and visitors to Paris should not omit on these days to go to Père-la-Chaise, Passy, Bolougne-sur-Seine, or one of the other cemeteries.
The French pay great respect to the dead. No funeral cortège is allowed to trot in Paris whatever the distance to the cemetery, and most men raise their hats and women cross themselves as the body passes in the streets. Soldiers and officials always salute. ”

“ The department of sidewalks and plantations is represented by a reduced model of the Crematory at Père Lachaise, plans and views of the new cemeteries at Pantin and Bagneux, as well as the future square of Montmartre.
The second pavilion of the City of Paris is more especially consecrated to instruction. After attending to the healthfulness of matter, attention must be given to the healthfulness of the mind and moral culture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She married and went east many years ago. I've heard mother speak of her. Sometimes she comes back here to visit her father. He is a very old man now.
A sigh escaped the Countess.
A little farther on, enclosed in an iron-fence, painted white, the cemetery began.
Do you mind, Gareth asked, walking through the cemetery? It's a short cut to where we're going.
Not at all. The Countess smiled. In Paris all tourists visit Père-Lachaise. Why shouldn't I visit the Maple Valley graveyard? ”