Part 3

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.”