PRESIDENT M. DELAGORGNE, OF THE COURT WHICH SENTENCED M. ZOLA TO IMPRISONMENT AND FINE ON ACCOUNT OF HIS DEFENCE OF DREYFUS. After a drawing by L. Sabattier.PRESIDENT M. DELAGORGNE, OF THE COURT WHICH SENTENCED M. ZOLA TO IMPRISONMENT AND FINE ON ACCOUNT OF HIS DEFENCE OF DREYFUS.After a drawing by L. Sabattier.
As a contrast to the Hôtel-Dieu, the Hôpital Cochin, in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, has one of the smallest salles de garde in Paris. In recompense, its diners have under their feet an immense city, with streets, open places, and many inhabitants, a city cool in summer and warm in winter, and which, for a long period of time, the internes of this hospital had been in the habit of considering as an annex to their dining-room. It is not every one who would take this view of the catacombs; but the practice of medicine and surgery does not lend itself to the cultivation of squeamishness. Every evening, accordingly, exploring parties were organized to visit these subterranean streets; underneath the hospital itself is a large open square, from which radiate, in every direction, lanes and avenues. These the internes at first explored by means of a compass, but, as a result of some judicious meditation before the commemorative slab recording the death by starvation of Philibert Aspaut, concierge of the Val-de-Grâce, lost in the catacombs in 1793, they took the trouble to unearth an old plan in the Musée Carnavalet and draw up a new one, probably now one of the best in existence. In consequence of this prudent conduct, they have never had any losses to deplore; but the frequency of these unprofessional rambles finally aroused the administration to action, and the hospital entrance to the underground city was closed. Since then, the disconsolate diners have had to seek other distractions;—it is said that they are greatly given to equitation, but as they have no horses in their salle de garde, they paint them by squadrons on the walls, as illustrated on page 259.
The catacombs are those portions of the ancient stone-quarries under the city which have been used as municipal ossuaries since 1786. As far back as the Roman epoch, the inhabitants of Lutetia were in the habit of drawing their building material from these subterranean quarries, of clay, gypsum, and limestone. The clay,argile plastique, is found in the region of Passy and Grenelle; the zone of gypsum extends from Montmartre to Bercy, and the limestone, rich in fossils, is found under Passy and most of the city on the left bank of the river, from the Jardin des Plantes on the east to the former barrière de Vaugirard on the west. This stone was largely used in the construction of ancient and mediæval edifices,—the Palais des Thermes, the portal of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, a portion of Notre-Dame, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and the old Hôtel-Dieu, were all supplied from the quarries of the Faubourgs Saint-Jacques and Saint-Michel. As the capital increased, these excavations were carried farther; those nearer the centre of the city were gradually filled up after being exhausted of their building material. By 1774, they had become the refuge of numerous thieves and vagabonds, and in consequence of the many accidents caused by the sinking of the earth over them, in the quartiers Saint-Jacques, of the Observatoire, and of Montrouge, in 1774, 1777, and 1778, an official inspection was ordered by the government, and a corps of engineers was directed to carry out all the necessary measures. The credit of the idea of using the quarries of Montsouris and of Montrouge as a receptacle for the bones from the ancient cemetery of the Innocents is ascribed to M. Lenoir, lieutenant général de police, as early as 1780; but it was not till November, 1785, that M. Guillaumot, inspecteur général of the quarries, received definite orders to prepare a suitable place for these relics of mortality.
ANCIENT CEMETERY DES INNOCENTS, IN THE RUE AUX FERS, 1780, SHOWING THE CHARNIERS FULL OF SKULLS. After a design by Bernier. The accumulation of human remains, during eight or nine centuries, in this place had become so great and evil that, in 1786, they were all transferred to the Catacombs, and a market was erected on this spot.ANCIENT CEMETERY DES INNOCENTS, IN THE RUE AUX FERS, 1780, SHOWING THE CHARNIERS FULL OF SKULLS. After a design by Bernier.The accumulation of human remains, during eight or nine centuries, in this place had become so great and evil that, in 1786, they were all transferred to the Catacombs, and a market was erected on this spot.
This officer selected the quarries under the plain of Montsouris in the locality known as the Tombe-Issoire—it was said from a famous brigand of the time of Louis VII, who ravaged this neighborhood, because of their extent and their proximity to the city. It was proposed to deposit in this ossuary not only the bones from the Innocents, but from all the other cemeteries, charniers, and sepulchral chapels of Paris. On the 7th of April, 1786, the quarries were formally blessed by the clergy and consecrated to their new use, and on the same day the transportation of the bones from the Innocents was begun. It was carried on constantly, at the close of each day, in funerary cars covered with a pall and followed by surpliced priests, chanting the service for the dead. This operation, interrupted only during the heat of summer, was completed in less than fifteen months; and the catacombs—so called from this date—have since received a vast number of bones from other cemeteries and churches, and also of the victims of the many street revolutions of the capital. During the Revolution and the Terror, a number of bodies were also thrown in here, and down to 1810 no attempt was made to arrange the bones, which were piled up like rubbish. It is estimated that these subterranean crypts now contain the remains of nearly three millions of persons,—the guide-books say six.
In 1810, a new organization and rearrangement of the catacombs were carried out, the falling roofs were propped up, the galleries cleaned out, ventilated, and dried, and the bones all symmetrically arranged along the walls—the large bones of the arms and legs piled up like cord-wood, presenting their ends, and interrupted by occasional rows, or centre-pieces, or cornices of skulls, and the smaller bones thrown in behind them, between them and the wall, so as to be out of sight. Various attempts at grotesque or fanciful designs, wrought out with craniums and tibias, break the monotony of these grisly corridors. Between 1792 and 1814, the catacombs permitted the suppression of sixteen cemeteries, and they still receive the bones that are turned up in the course of various excavations in the city. Visitors were formerly admitted to explore them every day, but in consequence of the numerous accidents which happened, greater restrictions were imposed, and it is now permitted to make this visit only on the first and third Saturdays of each month, and when furnished with a permit obtained from the Préfet of the Seine. The entrance is on the Place Denfert-Rochereau, and the exit on Rue Dareau; the journey is made under the care of a guide, and the visitor—who is advised to wear sufficiently thick clothing and heavy shoes—is furnished with a candle and a holder for which he pays fifty centimes.
The total number of entrances is sixty-three, many of them outside the city; these galleries are sufficiently well ventilated by numerous openings, and dry. The visitors traverse a certain route, in a general southerly direction, inspecting the various curiosities on the road and the greatOssuaire. In the latter are included several of these,—theFontaine de la Samaritaine, so called from an inscription which recalls the words of the Saviour to the Samaritan woman; theTombeau de Gilbert, which is only a column supporting the roof to which was given the form of a sepulchral monument; theLampe sépulcrale, theCrypte de Saint-Laurent, similar constructions, and the geological collection formed by M. Héricart de Thury, chief engineer of mines and inspector-general of quarries in 1810, which contains specimens of all the earths and minerals encountered in excavating the quarries.
UNDERGROUND WARD-ROOM OF THE MEDICAL STUDENTS OF THE HOSPICE COCHIN, IN THE CATACOMBS. After a drawing by Henri Bellery-Desfontaines.UNDERGROUND WARD-ROOM OF THE MEDICAL STUDENTS OF THE HOSPICE COCHIN, IN THE CATACOMBS.After a drawing by Henri Bellery-Desfontaines.
There were formerly to be seen in the Samaritan fountain numerous red fish, which were placed there in 1813 and thrived, but have now disappeared. The quarries are not without animal life,—in the region of the Jardin des Plantes have been found various insects, species of coleoptera, myriapod and thysanoura, and several small crustacea, all more or less blind. One of these latter, a species of small crayfish, inhabits the waters of a little stream which traverses the Ossuaire. The bones of the combatants of 1789 and 1790, and those of the victims of September, 1792, are collected and arranged by themselves in this ossuary. The walls of the galleries are set off with numerous quotations drawn from sacred literature and engraved on pillars in French, Latin, Greek, Italian, and Swedish.
One of the most remarkable of these curiosities, one which was the favorite show-place of the young doctors of the Cochin when they had guests and sufficient candles, is now no longer to be seen. This was a representation of the fort of Port-Mahon, in which he had been imprisoned by the English, cut in the face of the rock in high relief by an old soldier of the king, named Lescure, who had become a stone-cutter after his retirement from the army. This is situated in the quarry of Port-Mahon, under another quarry in the quarter of the Tombe-Issoire, which was discovered by Lescure, who kept his discovery to himself and passed his leisure in executing this record of his past career. When it was completed, he began to talk, and in order to enable his visitors to reach it easily he undertook the construction of a stairway uniting the two quarries; he had scarcely commenced it, when the earth gave way, and the unfortunate artist was crushed in the débris.
Notwithstanding the care taken to shore them up, the roofs of the abandoned quarries still give way occasionally under the superincumbent weight. In May, 1879, a house in the Passage Gourdon, Boulevard Saint-Jacques, sank through the earth; in the following year, a tree in the Luxembourg garden, near the Médicis fountain, did the same thing, and in July of this year, 1880, the lightning fell in this garden, and at almost the same moment two houses in the Boulevard Saint-Michel began to sink, as well as a large section of the sidewalk. These events naturally produced a great excitement in the quarter, and measures were taken to prevent a possible recurrence of such happenings. Proprietors proposing to build in these suspected districts are now required to conform to certain regulations of the inspector-general of quarries, who examines the subsoil under their properties.
PARTY OF STUDENTS LUNCHING DURING A VISIT TO THE CATACOMBS. Engraved from a flash-light photograph.PARTY OF STUDENTS LUNCHING DURING A VISIT TO THE CATACOMBS.Engraved from a flash-light photograph.
The Cimetière des Saints Innocents,—said to have dated from the time of Philippe-Auguste,—which thus contributed to the first furnishing of the catacombs, was one of the institutions of mediæval Paris. Surrounded by its arcades ofcharniers, it had long been one of the most popular resorts of the city, and the Danse Macabre, earlier than the famous one at Bâle, painted along fifteen of these arcades, with inscriptions "to incite the people to devotion," only incited them to dance themselves. It was believed that the Duc de Berry had caused these paintings to be executed after the assassination of the Duc d'Orléans, the king's brother, in 1407, and the verses written under each personage were attributed to Jean Gerson, who was "inspired by serious contemplation to appeal, by the presentation of death, to his contemporaries of this fifteenth century—so abounding in calamities of every nature." The contemplation of death ceased to appal them,—for the space of six months, from August, 1424, to Lent, 1425, the people were in the habit of assembling in the cemetery on Sundays and fête-days, grotesquely attired to represent various classes of society, and, led by a mask disguised as Death, dancing frantically over the graves and along the charniers heaped with skeletons. In thisronde infernalemight be recognized some obnoxious abbot, or procureur, or bourgeois, or serjent, travestied and caricatured; the people, "seeking for the moment to forget their cares and sorrows, mocked at that death which they no longer scarcely feared, for it was, at this disastrous epoch, very often for them a deliverance." Too close familiarity with theCamard—"the flat-nosed," the death's-head—had bred the proverbial lack of respect.
There is not very much information available concerning this Danse Macabre,—it is known that it was the most important mural painting of the cemetery of the Innocents, and it is now attributed to Jehan d'Orléans,valet de chambreand painter in ordinary to Charles VI, familiar companion of Jean, Duc de Berry. The first record that is known of it is found in the memoirs of a contemporary, printed under the title ofJournal de Paris sous Charles VI et Charles VII, à l'année 1424, and which gives this "Item:l'an iiiiexxiv fut faite la Danse Macabre à Saint-Innocent, et fut commencée environ le moys d'aoust et achevée au carême ensuivant,"—begun in August, 1424, and finished in the following Lent. In the library of the city of Grenoble is the only known copy of a work illustrating this painting with wood-cuts,—"cy finit la dāse macabre imprimée par ung nommé Guy Marchant demeurant en Champ Gaillart à Paris le vingt-huitiesme iour de septembre mil quatre cēt quatre vings et cinq,"—printed by Guy Marchant, Champ Gaillart, Paris, September 28, 1485. The earliest known wood-engraving is the German one of Saint Christopher, dated 1423,—one year before the execution of the Danse Macabre on the walls of the Innocents. The famous Dance of Death in Bâle was not executed till 1439, and Holbein—to whom it has been attributed—was not born till 1498. The Paris dance is thus much the earlier, and in the reproduction given by Guy Marchant the varying buffoonery of the grotesque figures of death is remarkable,—they laugh, they become astonished, they become enraged,—the "serious contemplation," which they were to inspire, seems far away to our modern eyes, so conventional in their conception only of a conventional horror, silent, menacing, without any shade of humor.
Another image of this mediæval Death has been preserved to our day. This is the small alabaster statue, formerly known as theMort Saint-Innocent; now preserved in the museum of the École des Beaux-Arts. It stood under the fifth arcade, when issuing from the church, in the charnier of "Messieurs les Martins," and had been executed by their order. It was kept enclosed in a box of which the church wardens had the key, and on All-Saints'-day it was exhibited to the people until noon of the next day. Although attributed to Germain Pilon, it is probably anterior to his time, and is now considered to be the work of a sculptor named François Gentil, a native of Troyes. As shown in the illustration, on page 278, it represents a corpse in the process of dissolution, "a much more striking figure than a skeleton;" it is about a mètre in height, stands upright, with a menacing expression, in its right hand it holds the folds of a shroud or winding-sheet, while the left rests upon the top of a species of shield on which is engraved the following quatrain, which was indicated by a dart placed between the fingers of the left hand:
Which may be translated "There is none living, however artful or strong to resist, that I do not strike with my dart, to give to the worms their share." Underneath this somewhat trite observation is a sort of monogram, the upright of which is supported by an M. When the church, the cemetery, and the charniers of the Innocents were all suppressed in 1786, this figure was transferred to the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie, afterward to the Musée des Monuments français, by M. Alexandre Lenoir, then to the Louvre, and finally to the Beaux-Arts.
"In the Middle Ages, Death played a very important part; in the arts, the games, and the ornamentation, his image was everywhere. The churches, the cemeteries, and the charniers were covered with epitaphs and with sinister phrases relating to death, and paraphrases of theDe profundisand theDies iræ. At every step, says the author of theLégende des trépassés, the thought of the life eternal presented itself, sombre and terrible;—the melancholy chants and lamentations sobbing under the vaults of the churches hung with black, the hurried tolling of the death-bell which seemed to appeal for help and to sound the tocsin of eternity, the slow and solemn processions of the monks and the penitents intoning in the public squares the seven psalms of penitence, the great dance macabre performed in the cemeteries and the city streets, the representation of the Last Judgment by the brothers of the Passion, ... the bell-ringer of the dead making his nocturnal round,—all these formed an ensemble of awe-inspiring scenes well calculated to alienate the living from the frailties of this world."
ENTRANCE TO THE CATACOMBS, PLACE DENFERT-ROCHEREAU. After a drawing by A. Sauvage.ENTRANCE TO THE CATACOMBS, PLACE DENFERT-ROCHEREAU.After a drawing by A. Sauvage.
The use ofcharniersto receive the bones of the dead, disinterred to make room for more recent corpses in the century-old cemeteries, was peculiar to Paris, and began with the Cimetière des Innocents at an unknown date. The word seems to have first been used in France in the eleventh century;—the historian, Raoul Glaber, quoted in MM. Firmin-Didot's important work on Paris, previously cited, tells us that after a terrible famine, "as it was no longer possible to inter each body separately because of their great number, the pious people who feared God constructed in divers localities charniers, in which were deposited more than five hundred corpses." A dictionary of architecture, published in Paris in 1770, defines the word as meaning a "gallery or portico, formerly constructed around the parish cemeteries, in which the catechism is taught, and in the lofts of which are stored the fleshless bones of the dead. They may be found in several parishes of Paris." Their use was not entirely discontinued till the close of the last century. A pious regard for the relics of the departed led to the search for some honorable place in which to store this constantly increasing multitude of skeletons; sheds or penthouses were used, chapels, the lofts of cloisters and churches. In Paris there were six important churches, the cemeteries of which were surrounded by extensive galleries, lit by rich windows and ornamented with elaborate funerary monuments, and eight other parishes of minor importance; one of the latest built of these, that of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, prided itself on having its steeple and its charnier in miniature. The two most important were that of the Innocents, the popular cemetery, and that of Saint-Paul, the aristocratic one.
To the accidental and isolated places of storage in the former succeeded a series of symmetrical constructions, built independently of each other, yet rapidly succeeding one another, and apparently all by funds proceeding from pious legacies and donations in the fourteenth century. These different galleries enclosed from twenty to twenty-five arcades each, and were largely open to the air, so that their ghastly contents were plainly visible. Some of them, it is thought, had no roofs, or very imperfect ones. Notwithstanding these charnel-houses and the reeking soil of the cemetery itself, a deposit for refuse and offal of every description, this locality was one of the most thronged in the mediæval city. The present Halles Centrales and the Marché des Innocents, which occupied the same site from 1785, are but the legitimate successors of the busy commerce carried on in this locality from the earliest times. Louis XI authorized the construction, in the Rue de la Ferronnerie, against the walls of the charniers, of little stalls or sheds to be let to poor trades-people on condition that they did not display their merchandise on the public street, very narrow in this quarter,—a restriction which was speedily disregarded. "An ordinance of Henri II, on highways, directed that this street should be widened, May 14, 1554; it was not executed, and, fifty-six years later, to the day, Henri IV was assassinated here, May 14, 1610." It may be remembered that the temporary obstruction of the narrow street, which compelled the royal coach to halt, gave Ravaillac his opportunity. In 1669, the charnier des Lingères was ordered to be demolished, and two years later it was reconstructed to form the northern wall of the Rue de la Ferronnerie.
Even the very imperfect sanitary science of the Middle Ages recognized this cemetery as a centre of infection, and innumerable complaints were addressed to the civic authorities from reign to reign. Toward the middle of the eighteenth century, these protestations became more frequent, and various reports were made upon the subject. In 1737, the Parlement, by a decree dated July 9th, appointed a committee of experts, consisting of MM. Lemery and Hunault, physicians of the Hôtel-Dieu, and Geoffroy,médécin chimiste, all three of them members of the Académie des Sciences, to report "upon the grounds for the complaints which have been made for more than forty years, perhaps for more than a century, upon the infection caused by the Cimetière des Innocents." The report of this commission, dated May 22, 1738, gives some lively details concerning the manners and customs of the times that may be sought for in vain in other and less candid records. "Two causes of these evil odors may be observed,—the fecal matter which the inhabitants of the neighboring houses throw into the cemetery, partly in a trench that has been made along the sides of the houses that are on the Rue de la Ferronnerie, and the infection from the graves during the time that they are open and being refilled. The first cause is the most obvious; the second does not seem to exercise any injurious effect on the health of the neighborhood.... Do the exhalations from the cemetery augment in time of epidemics?... The experience of the past does not seem to furnish any grounds for these slight suspicions.... The soil is not exhausted, but it is less fit to bring about the dissolution of the dead bodies."
Various remedies were proposed in the conclusion of the report: "Prevent the lodgers in the neighboring houses from throwing their water, urine, and filth into the cemetery, and, to this end, increase the number oflunettesin the closets and close the windows up with gratings." This particularly concerned the row of houses along the Rue de la Ferronnerie, which formed one of the long sides of the cemetery; they were five stories in height, and had been reconstructed under Louis XIV, eighty years before. A typical detail of the period may be found in the fact that there were "lunettes" only on the first floor; the dwellers in the upper stories found it more convenient to throw their refuse out of the windows than to carry it down-stairs. In fact,—says MM. Firmin-Didot's editor, from whom we gather these details,—had the private individuals any right to complain when, in building the palace of Versailles, only one thing had been forgotten,—the closets? "And yet these were the good old times, and MonsieurPurgon[of Molière'sMalade Imaginaire] was then held in great honor!"
The commission also made several recommendations concerning the cemetery, which to-day would be thought to be very insufficient. It was proposed to level the ground, to divide it into squares, to dig graves in a diagonal direction opposite to the one formerly followed, to oblige the grave-digger to take out the bones each time, to have only one common grave open all the time—instead of three, to double the size of the graves, to cover the bodies with eight inches or a foot of earth—according to the season, to open the graves by preference only in the winter, to burn the bones or transport them to the new grounds of the Porcherons, acquired by the chapter of Saint-Germain, and to exchange part of the soil taken from the graves for new soil from this locality. Another report, made by the commissioner Laumônier in 1780, advised the establishment of a provisional cemetery under the charge of the Capuchins,—"it were better," said the commissioner, "to have monks for a guardian rather than a drunkard, like that of the Innocents."
This was Maître Poutrain, who had beenfossoyeurhere for thirty years, and who made application to be transferred to the new cemetery as soon as he heard that his old one was to be suppressed. It was not suppressed, however, till six years later, and in 1785 we find another commission from the Académie des Sciences taking testimony and adopting the recommendations of the grave-digger Poutrain as though he had been a member of their own learned body. They even accepted this statement from him:—there was a square tomb in the cemetery, near the church, then only some three feet high, and which, when he commenced his labors in the grounds, had been so high that he could scarcely reach the top with his hands. That the soil had risen, however, cannot be doubted. There were two thousand or three thousand burials a year; Poutrain said he had officiated at ninety thousand himself during his term of office; and M. Héricart de Thury has estimated the number of inhumations in the course of six centuries as high as one million two hundred thousand. This has even been considered as below the probable number, on a basis of three thousand a year, and not allowing for famines, pestilences, epidemics, and wars,—all in a space estimated at nine thousand six hundred square feet.
Another account says that the cemetery was closed on the 1st of December, 1780, in consequence of the following incident: In July of that year, a shoemaker of the Rue de la Lingerie, having occasion to go down into his cellar to get some leather, was driven back by an insupportable odor. His neighbors having been called in and due investigation made, it was discovered that the foundation wall had yielded to the pressure of the earth of the cemetery, and that the cellar was half full of decomposing bodies, mostly from a trench that had been opened on that side of the grounds in the latter part of the preceding year, for the reception of some two thousand corpses. The police forbade the gazettes and journals to give any publicity to this incident, and a commission was appointed to investigate. A decree of the Archbishop of Paris, June 10, 1786, definitely closed the cemetery, the earth was screened, the bones placed in sacks and transported in covered carts to the old quarries under the plain of Montsouris in the locality called the Tombe-Issoire, as has been stated. Those which it had been intended to transport to the cemetery of the Faubourg Montmartre were, for want of space, taken to Montrouge.
The vegetable market which had been held in the Rue de la Ferronnerie was transferred to the site of the old cemetery, and for a number of years this Marché des Innocents, with its four or five hundred immense red parasols, under which the vendors sheltered themselves, was one of the sights of Paris. In 1813, galleries of wood were constructed around the enclosure for this purpose. In the centre was placed the old fountain from the corner of the Rues Aux Fers and Saint-Denis, with the five naiads in relief sculptured by Jean Goujon supplemented by three more, more or less in the same style, by Pajou. Since the reconstruction of the Halles Centrales, the Marché des Innocents has been transformed into a public garden, surrounding this monumental fountain.
As early as 1766, the Parlement of Paris had taken up the very important reform of suppressing all interments within the city, "a custom which had its origin only in the growth of the city which, in extending its limits, had gradually taken into its enclosure the cemeteries originally outside its walls." A municipal decree, in nineteen articles, forbade any further burials in the cemeteries then within the city walls, after the first day of January, 1766, or in churches, chapels, or vaults, excepting under certain limitations. This sanitary measure was, however, so vehemently opposed by all the curés of Paris that it was never enforced; the question of compelling all interments to take place in suburban cemeteries was not seriously taken up till 1804, when the grounds of Père-Lachaise were purchased by the city, and, to this day, the only interments that are forbidden within the built-up limits of the capital are the temporary ones, and the common ones for the poor,—thefosses temporaires, and thefosses communes.
CLOISTERS OF THE CHURCH DES INNOCENTS, SHOWING UPPER PORTIONS CONTAINING HUMAN SKULLS, AND THE FRESCOES OF THE "DANSE MACABRE."CLOISTERS OF THE CHURCH DES INNOCENTS, SHOWING UPPER PORTIONS CONTAINING HUMAN SKULLS, AND THE FRESCOES OF THE "DANSE MACABRE."
By a grotesque arrangement, the funeral arrangements in Paris were formerly in charge of the town-criers, thecrieurs de corps et de vins, thecrieurs-jurés, who held a monopoly of these public announcements, and who bawled through the streets, indifferently, the proclamation ofchoses estrangeswhich were lost, mules, children, horses, and the like, of wine to sell—when they carried a gilded drinking-cup, and of deaths—when they wore a sort of dalmatic sown with black "tears" and death's-heads. Their number was at first fixed at twenty-four, then at thirty, and an edict of January, 1690, raised it to fifty. They had a reprehensible fashion of announcing deaths and ringing their bell through the streets at all hours of the night: "Pray to God for the soul of Messire Suchaone, who has just died! Awake, all ye who sleep, and pray God for the dead!" The Parisian bourgeois, suddenly aroused from slumber by this hoarse appeal under his windows, entered into a state of fright, or of fury, according to his temperament. Thesecrieursandclocheteurs des trépassés, moreover, formed a wealthy and influential corporation which held the monopoly of what is to-day thePompes funèbres,—they furnished the serge, the robes, the mantles, the chaperons or hoods, the hangings, and the torches for the funerals, they even furnished the hired mourners when required, who preceded the cortège to the graves in black garments, "ringing their bells, drawing lugubrious sounds from grotesque instruments, appealing to the people to pray for the defunct, making an infernal uproar, and, in order to honor the dead, nearly killing the living." This corporation was in existence after 1789, but the hospitals and hospices had obtained the right of furnishing hangings for funeral ceremonies, and a decree of the year XII transferred it to churches and consistories.
The arrangements for interments, generally, were in harmony with the condition of the overcrowded and reeking cemeteries,—the bodies were usually transported to their last resting-places on men's backs or by their arms, the poor enjoyed the luxury of a bier only during this journey and were thrown half-naked into the common grave. From this period of the Revolution, these summary processes were forbidden; the bodies were obliged to be carried in wagons or cars, excepting those of children, though sometimes several coffins were placed in the same vehicle. For more seemly processions, the cars were drawn by two horses, walking, accompanied by anordonnateurand three porters in costume, or even by fouraumônierson horseback supporting the canopy. In the latter case, the hearse would be furnished with no less than eight horses. For these sumptuous occasions, however, thejurés-crieurswould deem it necessary to accompany the funeral cortége with a convoy of saddle-makers, harness-makers, and wheelwrights, in case the heavy funeral car should happen to upset or to become stalled in the mud. The presence of these auxiliaries in their working costumes was concealed as much as possible; they were placed in the hearse, sitting on the coffin itself, and concealed from view by the heavy black curtains of the vehicle,—here they amused themselves by playing at dice on the bier, drinking, if they had had the forethought to bring a bottle along, or sometimes by showing their faces through the openings of the black curtains and making grimaces at the four mounted aumôniers, whose dignity forbade them to reply in kind.
A certain contractor, a Sieur Bobée, was authorized by the Préfet of the Seine, M. Frochot, in 1801, to furnish to wealthy families the means necessary to give their interments the desired pomp, and he was, in fact, the first organizer of the Pompes funèbres. He collected, at his own cost and risk, all the requisite material, and drew from his wealthy clients a sufficient recompense to reimburse him for the gratuitous burial of the poor, which was required of him. He received, also, the proceeds of the funerary tax, which provided the indigent with a shroud, a coffin, and the necessary transportation to the grave. Under his successors, the business gradually enlarged till, in 1869, the municipal administration judged it expedient to purchase a site and erect buildings that should assure a sufficient establishment for the future. The war with Germany delayed the completion of this undertaking, but the new buildings of the Pompes funèbres, offices, stables, store-rooms, etc., all complete, were finally inaugurated in 1873. They were constructed in the name, and at the cost, of the city of Paris, and the funerary establishment pays a rent of two hundred thousand francs. These buildings are situated on the site of the former abattoirs de la Villette, on the Rues Curial and d'Aubervilliers. In the manufactory is kept a large stock of coffins and caskets of all kinds, and a reserve stock is always on hand in case of epidemics; in the carriage-houses are nearly three hundred and fifty vehicles of all kinds, and in the stables, three hundred and sixty-four horses,—two hundred and ninety-one black ones.
The service of the Pompes funèbres is placed under the surveillance of the Préfet of the Seine. The administration centrale may be addressed directly by telephone, to 104 Rue d'Aubervilliers, when required, or application may be made to the bureau of the Pompes funèbres in each Mairie, or to their agents in each arrondissement. There is a conseil d'administration of thirteen members, elected, ten by the city churches, one by the consistory of the Reformed Church, one by the consistory of the Confession d'Augsbourg, and one by the Israelite consistory. This conseil represents thefabriques—that is to say, the revenues and property—of the parochial churches, divided into ten circonscriptions, and the consistories of the non-Catholic churches of the city. There is also a vicar-general, delegated by the Archbishop of Paris, who is a member of the conseil, and ranks next to the president.
DEATH. Alabaster statuette, one mètre high, kept in the charniers of Saint-Innocent; uncovered on All-Saints'-day.DEATH.Alabaster statuette, one mètre high, kept in the charniers of Saint-Innocent; uncovered on All-Saints'-day.
The expense of a funeral, of course, varies very greatly. An ordinary coffin costs from eight francs to forty-four. The municipal tax, which brings in to the city treasury annually some eight hundred and sixty thousand francs, is included in the cost of each class of funeral, and varies from forty francs for the first and second classes to six francs for the ninth. For theconvois catholiques, the expense is from eight thousand to ten thousand francs for the first class; for theconvois protestants, four thousand two hundred to seven thousand five hundred for first class; for theenterrements israelites, two thousand nine hundred at the most. The ninth, or cheapest, class of funeral, of all these may be had for eighteen francs seventy-five centimes for the Catholic, nine francs for the Protestant, and three francs for the Israelite. These figures vary according to the parish, the size of the church or temple, etc., but they generally include the decoration of the residence, the draping of the place of worship in which the service is held, the payment for this religious service, etc., but not the cost of the coffin, of the land in the cemetery, of the tickets of invitation or notices of death, and other details. In the Jewish service, there is an item of a thousand francs for the choir, either at the dwelling or in the cemetery. For theconvois civils, where there is no official religious service, the price varies from eighteen hundred and fifty to twenty-four hundred francs for the first class to nine francs for the ninth. For incinerations, the cost is about the same, adding the tax to be paid the city,—three hundred francs for the first class, and fifty for the sixth, seventh, and eighth. A permit for a gratuitous interment may be obtained by presenting at the Mairie a certificate of indigence obtained from the Commissaire de Police upon application sustained by two witnesses in good standing.
As in every other important event of his life, the Parisian is obliged in this—the last—to occupy himself with the officialprocès-verbauxof hisétat civil. At his decease, anactemust be drawn up, upon the declaration of two witnesses, if possible the nearest relatives, or neighbors, giving his name, Christian name, profession, age, place of birth, domicile, those of his father and mother, and those of the attestors, with an indication of their relationship if they are relations; stating whether the deceased was married or widowed, and, in either case, the name and Christian name of his spouse. No operation upon the corpse, such as autopsy, embalming, or taking a cast, can be performed before the expiration of twenty-four hours after death, and then only upon the authorization of the Préfecture de Police, and in the presence of the Commissaire de Police of the quarter. This authorization is granted only upon the statements of two doctors,—one of the official Médecins de l'État Civil, and another physician, sworn and delegated for the occasion. The family must preserve and produce upon the demand of the Médecin de l'État Civil all the prescriptions of the doctor who had attended the deceased in his last illness; they must also give the name and address of the doctor and of the druggist who prepared the prescriptions. It is also forbidden to clothe the body or place it in the coffin, or to cover the face, before the expiration of twenty-four hours,—a light veil of very thin gauze alone is permitted. It cannot be denied that these are all very intelligent precautions.
In these funeral processions, the public authority is represented by theordonnateur des Pompes funèbres; "it is he who, from the residence of the defunct to his last resting-place, never quits him, watching over him like a faithful friend." His official costume has been modified of late years,—he now wears a red and blue scarf, a cockade with the two colors, and his insignia is embroidered on the collar of his coat. The Napoleonic cocked hats, black garments, and high boots of the drivers of the hearses are familiar sights in the streets of the capital, especially in the neighborhood of the cemeteries, driving slowly at the head of their mournful processions, or, in their moments of relaxation, descended from the heights of their sable chariots and drinking familiarly at the zinc bar of a workman's wine-shop, side by side, it may be, with the white blouses of masons and plasterers. The four hundredporteursof the Pompes funèbres still retain their ancient familiar designation ofcroque-morts, concerning the derivation of which there is much uncertainty. A number of theRevue des traditions populairessuggests that it may come from the mediæval custom of biting the little finger of the deceased at the moment of placing in the coffin, in order to obtain a final assurance of death. At the masked balls of the Opéra, these personages are represented by the traditional Père Bazouge and the cheerful Clodoche,—shedding their decorum with their official costumes.
By the decree of 1804, which forbade all inhumations within the walls of the capital, it was provided that there should be established cemeteries outside the city limits, and at a distance of not less than thirty-five or forty mètres. Four such enclosures were ordained: the Cimetière du Nord, or of Montmartre, on the north; that de l'Est, or of Père-Lachaise, on the east; that du Sud, or of Vaugirard, on the south, and that of Sainte-Catherine. The first of these was already in existence, having been established in 1798 by the municipal administration, to replace that in the plain of Clichy, comparatively new, which had replaced the old one of Saint-Roch. The Montmartre cemetery occupied the site of an abandoned and very extensive plaster quarry, whence it took its popular name of Cimetière des Grandes-Carrières, and it was also known, more poetically, as theChamp de repos, while the Montparnasse, later, was given that ofChamp d'asile. When the city limits were enlarged, in 1859, Montmartre, in common with other communes of the suburbs, was brought within the enclosure, and, after the creation of the new cemetery of Saint-Ouen, called by the people Cayenne, the only interments in Montmartre were those made in the vaults of certain private families.
Père-Lachaise, the most important and most picturesque of these enclosures in Paris, takes its name from the confessor of Louis XIV, to whom it was presented by his royal penitent. The Cimetière de l'Est was inaugurated, in 1804, in a locality which originally bore the name of Champ l'Évêque, because it had been the property of the Bishop of Paris. The Jesuits purchased it, in 1626, under cover of a private individual, and established there a country house, surrounded by trees and shrubbery, the site of which is indicated to-day very nearly by the central rond-point of the cemetery. Popular report ascribed to this pleasure-house a character in keeping with the hypocrisy and luxury of the order as painted by its enemies; and young Louis XIV visited it, in consequence of which it became known as Mont-Louis. Afterward, when in the possession of the royal confessor,—who said, himself, of his office: "Bon Dieu! quel rôle!"—it was still further enlarged, and the grounds handsomely laid out around his little villa, two stories in height, overlooking Paris. At his death, it came again into the possession of the fathers of his order, and at their suppression, in 1763, it was sold to pay their creditors. The Préfet of the Seine purchased it for its conversion into a municipal cemetery in 1804.
That of Vaugirard was situated near the ancient barrière and at the entrance of what was then the village of Vaugirard; it had in nowise the importance of the two just mentioned, and was much more the burial-ground of the poor than of the rich. As early as 1810, its insufficience was recognized, and in 1824 it was closed, and replaced by that of Montparnasse. The Cimetière Sainte-Catherine was in the quarter Saint-Marcel, by the side of the old cemetery of Clamart, which was full of bodies and closed in 1793; Sainte-Catherine was also replaced by Montparnasse in 1824. 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. Vaugirard and Sainte-Catherine have since been completely removed, and the sites devoted to other uses; and the number of ancient urban cemeteries that have thus disappeared is very considerable. That of the old church of Saint-Roch is now traversed by the narrow streets which enclose the church; that of Saint-Gervais is buried under the caserne Lobau, back of the Hôtel de Ville; Sainte-Marguerite-Saint-Antoine, in which were placed the remains of the young dauphin, is now a waste land; Saint-Joseph, and the little Cimetière de la Chapelle Marcadet which was used during the siege of 1871, are now occupied by commercial or secular establishments. Among those the sites of which are still recognizable are Saint-Vincent and Saint-Pierre at Montmartre; Saint-Médard—so famous in the last century as the scene of the extravagances of the convulsionnaires and the alleged miracles on the tomb of the Jansenist deacon, Paris—has been only partially destroyed by the opening of the Avenue des Gobelins; and on the old Cimetière de la Madeleine now rises the Chapelle Expiatoire to the memory of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.
A CORNER IN THE CEMETERY OF PÈRE-LACHAISE: TOMBS OF COUTURE, THE PAINTER; LEDRU-ROLLIN, THE STATESMAN; COUSIN, THE PHILOSOPHER; AND AUBER, THE COMPOSER. Drawn from a photograph.A CORNER IN THE CEMETERY OF PÈRE-LACHAISE: TOMBS OF COUTURE, THE PAINTER; LEDRU-ROLLIN, THE STATESMAN; COUSIN, THE PHILOSOPHER; AND AUBER, THE COMPOSER.Drawn from a photograph.
Each of the great cemeteries, both within and without the walls, is under the charge of aconservateur, having under him a receiver or steward, a surveyor, clerks, guardians, and grave-diggers. The guards, who number in all a hundred and thirty-five, including five brigadiers and fifteen sous-brigadiers, have all been sworn into office and are empowered to draw up procès-verbaux. The landscape-gardening of the cemeteries is all under the direction of theservice des promenades, and the municipal administration of the city of Paris takes a laudable pride in maintaining the picturesqueness and attractiveness of these places of sepulchre. Many of the tombs, or funerary monuments, are preserved through legacies or donations, and the city assumes the care of others possessing an historical or patriotic interest, as those of Abélard and Héloïse, of Molière, of La Fontaine, of Casimir Périer, and the "four sergeants of La Rochelle." Consequently, the cemeteries of the capital are, distinctly, one of the features of the city,—Père-Lachaise, particularly, is a most curious, picturesque, original, and characteristic "sight," and, alike on the day of Toussaints when they are visited by the populace almosten masse, and when they receive the solitary funeral procession winding slowly through the streets, the carriages followed by a long train of mourners on foot, they may be said to be truly representative institutions of this people with whom we are for the moment concerned.
"The people of Paris," says M. Henry Havard, "are, assuredly, the most extraordinary people that there are in the world. [This, of course; no reference to the capital, even the slightest, is permissible without this statement.] Not only do they possess a prodigious quantity of remarkable qualities, and a number almost equally great of not less remarkable defects, but that which distinguishes them from the rest of humanity is, that their virtues and their vices, their good qualities and their defects, are in a measure contradictory.
"To cite only one example,—no population is more profoundly irreverent and more completely sceptical. The glories the most assured, the reputations the most solidly established, scarcely find toleration in their eyes. A scoffer by nature, a jeerer by temperament, a humbugger by education, the Parisian perpetually forces himself to accept nothing seriously, and to respect neither sex nor age nor glory. But, by one of those contradictions with which this character swarms, the moment that death has accomplished his sinister work, everything becomes to him sacred.
"When a funeral procession traverses a street or passes along a boulevard, all noise ceases at the moment, and it might be said that all life is momentarily suspended. Poor or rich, young or old, this dead man who, two days earlier, would have found no consideration from this jesting crowd, is respectfully saluted by the multitude. The vehicles which, during his lifetime, would have taken the chances of running over him sooner than slackening their speed, now pull up suddenly to allow him to pass. The sentry on duty salutes; the women cross themselves; the men uncover!
"In the enclosure specially reserved for death, the spectacle is not less edifying. There are but very few cemeteries in Europe as well maintained as the Parisian cemeteries. In no other city are they more frequently visited, and more respectfully. The multitude that there throngs scarcely dares to speak, and converses only in subdued tones. Even those who have in them neither relatives nor friends visit them at least once a year. The first and the second of November are generally selected for this pious pilgrimage. These are the fête-days of our cemeteries.
"In order that they may appear more attractive on these days, the toilette of the funeral monuments and the tombs is commenced long in advance. The bouquets are renewed. The wreaths that are too much faded are replaced by others. 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. "You may there discover, in fact, very many tombs decorated with names familiar in various ways, and even very great names, which certainly have never contained the ashes of those whose memory they honor. Neither Lavoisier, nor Lesurques, 'victim of the most deplorable of judicial errors,' as his epitaph says, nor General Malet, whose body was interred in the cemetery of executed criminals, would be able to find themselves under the monuments which a posthumous piety has reared to them. The same can be said of the tombs of Racine, of Molière, and of La Fontaine, which were the first to embellish these groves, and of which the style proclaims clearly enough that they do not date further back than the First Empire. It is the same for Héloïse and Abélard, and for their graceful little structure to which the lovers and the newly married do not fail to pay pious visits. This historic tomb, constructed of composite materials, is also of very recent erection. The two statues ornamented, in the last century, the monument which stood in the Abbaye de Paraclet; from there they were transported at first to the Musée des Petits-Augustins, and, in 1817, to the place where we now see them. The graceful canopy which covers them is formed of materials borrowed from the ancient Abbaye de Nogent-sur-Marne. As to the ashes of these perfect lovers, they have been scattered to the winds for a great many centuries."
Many of the old cemeteries in the city, he says, owe their temporary celebrity to the accidental interment within their enclosures of some particularly illustrious deceased. "That which surrounded Saint-Roch received the remains of Corneille. It is known that Molière was secretly buried in the Cimetière de Saint-Joseph, which received also the body of La Fontaine. As to the little cemetery of Saint-Gervais, we should be ignorant of its existence if the authors of the seventeenth century had not taken pains to reveal to us that Marion Delorme was there laid to rest. Still more, the fact would have remained unknown had it not been for the whim of her family which, after having crowned her with a wreath of orange flowers, had the assurance to accord her the funeral of a virgin. The curé of Saint-Gervais, who had received her confession, opposed this masquerading, and he did well. Let us not laugh too much at these curious pretensions. At Père-Lachaise, in the chapel in which Mlle. Mars reposes, there can be seen very clearly, through the gratings of the door, a wreath of white roses and orange flowers."