XXI.
THE CATACOMBS OF PARIS.
THE FAIR CAPITAL UNDERMINED.—HISTORY OF THE VAST GRAVEYARD.—SIX MILLIONS OF SKELETONS.—A JOURNEY THROUGH THE CITY OF THE DEAD.—HORRIBLE SENSATIONS OF BEING LOST THERE.—GHASTLY DISPLAY OF SKULLS AND BONES.—TRAGIC AND COMIC INCIDENTS.—TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE IN THE MIGHTY CHARNEL-HOUSE.—SCENES NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN.
Few persons think, while strolling through the fashionable streets of Paris, and seeking pleasure in its charming precincts, that they are wandering over a vast graveyard, and that only a thin crust of earth separates them from the burial-place of six millions of human beings. Down there lie the remains of a third as many people as the entire French capital contains. A large part of the beautiful city is undermined by vaults, and these vaults, which are the famous Catacombs of Paris, contain the dead of centuries.
The Catacombs of Paris are not used, like the Catacombs of ancient Thebes, Rome, and Naples, as places of original sepulture; for they were once quarries from which the stone employed in building the city was taken. The quarries were beneath the southern part of the town, directly below the Observatory, the Luxembourg, the Odéon, the Pantheon, and many of the well-known streets, such as St. Jacques, La Harpe, Tournou, Vaugirard, and others. Their extent is estimated to be about three millions of square yards; and long before they were cemeteries, they served as refuge and shelter for thieves, incendiaries, assassins, and all the desperate criminals who for many centuries abounded in the city. It is only a little more than a hundred years since Paris has been orderly, or in any sense secure. During the middle ages, and down tothe latter half of the past century, property and life were extremely unsafe. Ruffians stalked abroad by day as well as by night, and bade defiance to law and its guardians. In those times the quarries shielded many of the greatest villains in the capital. After committing robbery, arson, or murder, they fled into those excavations, and the men whose duty it was to arrest them were afraid to follow where they would certainly have been massacred. Many are the stories told of policemen and soldiers meeting their death in the subterranean vaults at the hands of the malefactors they were pursuing. These were so familiar with all the recesses and windings of the quarries that they could not only escape, but they could lie in ambush, and fall upon the officers of the law with terrible vengeance. So numerous were the murders committed in the quarries by ruffians of the olden time, that finally none of the king’s minions could be found bold enough to venture into those abodes of mystery, darkness, and crime.
RESORTS OF THIEVES.
In 1784 some part of the quarries was broken through from above, and as there was imminent danger of the houses in the streets falling into ruin from similar accidents, a number of the most skilful engineers were ordered by the government to descend into the quarries, make a careful investigation, and render them in future altogether secure. While so engaged, M. Lenoir, lieutenant general of the police, conceived the idea of removing to the vaults the remains that had been buried in the cemetery of the Innocents, then standing on the present site of the Halles Centrales, the principal market of the city. Other graveyards within the municipal limits needed to be emptied, and it was determined that the contents of these graves should also be transferred to the subterranean region; so, on the 7th of April, 1786, a formal consecration of the Catacombs as a place of burial took place with imposing religious rites and ceremonies. The human bones were borne from the graves at night in funeral cars, accompanied by priests decked in their sacerdotal robes, carrying torches, swinging censers, and chanting the RomanCatholic service for the dead, and on arriving at the depository were hurled down a shaft in magnificently miscellaneous confusion. Such a democratic mixture, osseously speaking, of saints and sinners, princes and peasants, reformers and robbers, bishops and beggars, poets and pickpockets, grand ladies and grisettes, coquettes and cocottes, was never before made on the banks of the Seine. This superb disorder remains to the present day, so far as rank and caste are concerned. The skull of a pious prelate rests upon the ribs of a desperate cutthroat, and the thigh-bone of a once renowned beauty of the Faubourg St. Germain touches the grinning teeth of a vulgar conscript shot for desertion. The skeleton arms of a dainty poet are interlocked with those of a hideous hag who poisoned her father and mother in the Rue de la Croix Rouge.
A BONY CONFUSION.
If the opinion be well founded, that on the day of judgment the dead will arise in their proper persons, the unfortunates buried in the Catacombs of Paris will find it an extremely arduous task to collect themselves together. One might imagine, in such a universal resumption of long-cast-off and worn-out fleshly garments, that some nondescript individual might appear on the awful scene with the head of a marquis on the trunk of a rag-picker, borne along by the legs of a ballet dancer, and a cripple gesticulating to the angelic host with the right arm of a cardinal and the left arm of a lorette. It has long been a theological problem whether, on that solemn occasion, the dead will recognize each other; but it will be a matter of even more serious moment to them whether many of the Parisians will be able, so strangely will they be made up, to recognize themselves. That there will be a rattling among the dry bones no one who has entered the Catacombs can doubt, and that much of the rattling will arise from Monsieur Bonjour’s effort to make a complete conjunction with his remains, and from Madame Beaujoli’s endeavor to hunt herself up, must be plain to everybody. Some of these anticipated troubles may be partially obviated, however, by the fact that the bones from one cemetery have been keptapart from the bones of another; and as this predicted resurrection is not likely to occur for some time, we need not concern ourselves in regard to the hypothetical awkwardness and inconveniences of so distant a future.
ENTERING THE CATACOMBS.
Until within a few years, admission to the Catacombs could be readily obtained; but their insecurity, resulting in a number of accidents, has recently prevented the authorities from opening these gloomy recesses to the public more than once annually,—usually about the first of October,—when a few persons are permitted, after obtaining tickets from the inspector general, to accompany him in his subterranean tour. The first time I visited Paris I was extremely anxious to wander through the Catacombs; but finding many obstacles in my way, and being much occupied otherwise, I quitted the city without gratifying my curiosity. I returned, however, ere long, and was so diligent in prosecuting my purpose that one pleasant autumn morning, in company with a dozen strangers, I descended from the garden of the city custom-house at the Barrière d’Enfer to explore the stony chambers of the dead.
We had provided ourselves with wax tapers, which we lighted, each of us carrying one, before we went down a circular flight of some one hundred steps leading to the dismal galleries running in every direction, and containing the ghastly remains of millions of our fellow-creatures, once as merry and ambitious, as fond and foolish, as hopeful and as vain, as any of us are to-day. At the bottom of the staircase a guide placed himself at our head, and, observing that our tapers were all in good order, took the lead, after exhorting us to keep together, and on no account, if we valued our lives, to attempt to explore any other than the main avenues through which we were to pass.
The Catacombs hold the victims of the different revolutions so frequent in Paris; and now, moreover, the common graves (les fosses communes) in the three principal cemeteries of Montmartre, Mont Parnasse and Père la Chaise, are emptied every five years, and the plebeian relics consigned to theCatacombs, to make room for more bodies in those populous burying-grounds. Thus are the great vaults steadily and rapidly increasing their lifeless hosts, and adding to the horrors of a region necessarily horrible from the first.
THE FIRST OF THE PASSAGES.
YAWNING PITS AND CAVERNS.
Several hundred yards from the base of the steps which we had descended is an octagonal vestibule, and over it an inscription in Latin to this effect: “Beyond these boundaries repose those who await a blessed immortality.” We passed through a door leading into a long gallery lined with bones from the floor to the roof; the arm, leg, and thigh-bones being closely and regularly piled together in front, their uniformity relieved by three rows of skulls at equal distances, while behind these the smaller bones are thrown, regardless of arrangement of any kind. The gallery conducts to several apartments resembling chapels, called Tombs of the Revolutions, and Tombs of the Victims, because they hold the relics of those who had perished in popular insurrections against existing authority. I had noticed, before reaching the vestibule, and what may be considered the Catacombs proper, that the passage was very narrow,—only two persons being able to walk abreast therein,—and little more than six feet in height. This passage soon made a sharp turn, and at the corner the names of the streets directly above were cut into the stone, and two black arrows painted upon it, one pointing to the entrance of the vaults, and the other to the great charnel-house we were about to explore. We were in chambers of hewn-out rock. Rock was above us, below us, and on every side. The walls were very damp, the water in many places dripping through what might be termed the ceiling, in which were so many cracks and crevices that it seemed as if the walls might tumble and bury us at any moment. Two or three of my companions grew very nervous as they perceived about them such alarming signs of insecurity, and expressed the wish that they had not undertaken what they declared to be a foolhardy enterprise. As I walked along, I saw at different turnings of the passage what appeared to be deep, yawning pits; and feeling a curiosity to examine them, I stopped and stretched my taper overthe side. Appearances were not deceitful. The deep pits were really there—dark, awful, and impenetrable. I could not help thinking how easy it would be for any one who should get lost and become bewildered, to stumble into one of those fearful holes and dash his brains out. Even such a dreary death would be infinitely preferable to the long agony of confinement in, without any hope of release from, such a place of horrors. While I was speculating on the possibility of the situation, the little procession got quite beyond me, and I was aroused from my gloomy reverie by the echoing voice of the guide urging the members of our party to keep close together. I hurried forward just in time to see the door of the vestibule open, and to go in with the rest.
The Catacombs are laid out very much like the old quarters of Paris, the different avenues being named after the streets above them, and the principal buildings overhead being indicated on the walls. It seemed very strange that certain famous structures, with which I am very familiar, should be only eighty or a hundred feet from where we were walking, as those sepulchral caverns appeared hundreds of miles away from the bright and beautiful city we had quitted half an hour before. Nothing can be more dismal and depressing than the Catacombs, with their miles and miles of human bones and skulls confronting you wherever you turn, and seeming to dance and grin as the light and the shadow of the passing tapers fall upon them.
How easily we are cheated by the imagination! I could almost have sworn, as I hurried by, that I saw some of the thigh-bones move to and fro, and the jaws of the skulls open and shut, and extend, in ghastly grimace, a repulsive welcome from the dead to the living, who would soon be no more than those hideous remains. There is a certain fascination, however, I must confess, in the sombre, subterranean city. The parade and panoply of grim mortality held me like a spell, and again and again I found myself far in the rear of the solemn excursionists. I liked to fall behind and watch the thick shadows which gave way before and closed in behindthem, and listen to the hollow and dreary echoes of their voices murmuring through the mighty vaults. I fancied the babbling company to be a crew of resurgent spirits, whose duty it was to visit the cemeteries of the globe, and awake the dead to judgment. They had a certain weird semblance as they flitted on in the dim distance, and their tones came back to me as if they had fallen from tongues long silent in the grave. The fancy pleased me, and I indulged it, and the kindred fancy that the heaps of bones were animated, until, sometimes, so strong were the suggestions of the place, I really confounded the living with the dead.
Once, in going by an avenue running to the right, I yielded to a temptation to step into it, to look at an extraordinary heap of bones. This did not occupy more than thirty seconds,—at least, it did not appear longer,—and yet, when I stepped back into the broader passage (the main avenues in the Catacombs are much wider than those I have mentioned outside the vestibule), I found, to my utter consternation and horror, that my companions had left me; I could not see the light of their tapers, nor could I hear the least echo of their steps or voices.
LOST IN THE CATACOMBS.
FEELINGS OF HORROR.
Lost in the Catacombs! How often I had imagined it! and now, indeed, it had become a terrible reality. Horror almost paralyzed me for the moment. I seemed to be all nerve and brain, and these thrilled and throbbed so wildly that I was forced to lean against the rock for support. I thought I should go mad, for there was something in the very idea of being shut up in that awful cavern, in the awful silence and awful darkness, doomed to perish by inches, every hour expanding to an age, which rendered any other means of death blissful by contrast. My head swam, and I believed I was about to swoon, when, feeling that to do so was to be destroyed, I roused my will and almost involuntarily sprang forward. My movement was so sudden that my taper was extinguished, and an inky blackness fell upon me like a pall. The horror of my situation was a hundred-fold increased. If I could have lighted my little candle again, I should havebeen almost happy; and yet, a few seconds before, I had regarded myself as the most miserable of mortals. My brain seemed to be absolutely bursting, and my heart forcing itself into my throat. I was conscious of a sense of suffocation, and I was not sure that the rocky walls were not pressing together to crush me. I remember having an anxious longing that they might do so, and end the agony I was enduring. I frankly admit I had never known before what human suffering can be. I had not supposed myself capable of such mental anguish; it was ten thousand times more, and worse, than death—an indefinable and overwhelming dread of something which might not be named, but that could be pictured with miraculous power. I had confronted death often, in sickness, in catastrophe, in battle, on land and water, by falling, and by fire, and the so-called King of Terrors had not shown himself half so terrible as I had anticipated. But then and there, in those silent and rayless Catacombs, I was unnerved, overpowered, and horrified, by a crushing dread of the unknown. Every moment was a month. Every feeling was a minister of horror. Exactly what I did I shall never know, though I seem to have a misty recollection that I strove to kill myself by dashing my head against the rocks. For some time I was incapable of determining my conduct; and then, with all my exquisite sense of mental pain, I was aware of hurrying rapidly through the thick darkness.
How long this continued I know not; but of a sudden I saw beyond me a flash of light like the aurora in the far northern sky. Was I really mad? Was I dreaming? Was I dead, and waking from the sleep of death? I rubbed my eyes, I pinched myself, I tried to scream, but I could not make a sound. Burning as my throat was, and all on fire as I seemed from head to foot, my voice froze as I sought to give it utterance.
Still, I was not deceived. Therewasa light before me, and as I dashed on involuntarily, I saw that it proceeded from the tapers of my companions, whom I had nearly overtaken. The reaction of my feelings almost prostrated me.My heart beat like a tilt hammer, my breath was well nigh spent, my pulses leaped with fever, and yet I felt that my face must be blanched, and I should not have been surprised if my hair had turned gray.
In a few seconds I had joined my party and relighted my taper. Nobody knew through what a crisis I had passed, nor did I say anything about it except to remark, casually, that I had extinguished my candle by letting it fall. From inquiries I learned that from the moment I had missed my companions until I had rejoined them, not more than two minutes had elapsed; and still, by the measure of my mind, I had lived through months of pain.
If I had not already known it, I should have been convinced then that time can be reckoned only by feeling; that no clock can keep the record of the heart; and that the soul strikes hours every moment of its existence.
ADVICE TO EXPLORERS.
I would advise those who may feel inclined to go through the Catacombs to take a box of wax matches in their pocket, and a little luncheon besides, so that if their taper be blown out, or they be lost, they may at least be relieved from the terror of absolute darkness and immediate starvation. When persons are missed down there, a search is immediately made for them, and nobody would feel half so uncomfortable while he had light and food as he would in the midst of gloom, and haunted by the necessity of dining on himself.
The moist and grave-like odor which fills the Catacombs, added to the images of death on every side, intensifies their sepulchral aspect, and makes those wandering in the ghastly haunts seem to themselves only half alive. The faces of those with me did not appear any more natural than their voices, and all of us had a certain taint of the tomb. Even the tapers flickered and sank in the unwholesome atmosphere, as though even fire, which rages in the centre of the earth, could not support itself in that dusky Golgotha.
In some places the skulls have been arranged in the form of crosses and set into the wall—probably by the priests of Paris, who, like all their tribe, delight in symbols and devicescoupling death and religion; forgetting that the creed they preach declares there is no death, that true religion leads to eternal life. Monks of all ages—and there are many monks who have never taken orders—have been little more than sacerdotal sextons, revelling in disease and decay, lamentation and funerals, as if Nature had set their spirits to the music of bereavement and woe.
Bones, bones, bones! Skulls, skulls, skulls! I can well believe six millions of mortal remains have been deposited in the Catacombs, which look as if they might have been the graveyard of the globe since the dawn of creation. They furnish the most extensive bone-yard I have ever visited. They do not contain nearly so many dead, in all probability, as the Catacombs of Rome; but on the Seine the dead are exhibited to much more advantage than on the Tiber. The French make the most of everything, and their osseous arrangement and display are not equalled anywhere.
FONDNESS FOR SOUVENIRS.
Americans have often been laughed at for their fondness for relics, and very deservedly too; for they seek mementos in all places, and under every variety of circumstances. I should never have suspected any of my countrymen of a disposition to deprive the Catacombs of any of their horrors; and yet several of them actually carried off shin and thigh bones in order to recall the pleasure they had experienced in Paris. One fellow—I think he was a medical student from Boston—tried to secure a whole skull; but as he could not very conveniently get it into his pocket, he was reluctantly forced to leave it behind. Possibly he was an admirer of the first Napoleon, and anxious to obtain a souvenir of Bonaparte. I presume I have met men who, if they were given time and opportunity, would despoil that horrid vault of a very large proportion of its revolting treasures.
During our ramble we encountered a well of pure water enclosed by a wall. In it are a number of gold-fish that manage to live by some mysterious means, though the guide informed us that they did not spawn. The well comes from a spring which some of the workmen discovered while makingrepairs many years ago, and gave it the name of the Spring of Forgetfulness, afterwards changed to the Fountain of the Good Samaritan. The water is declared to be sweet; but I should need to be extremely thirsty before drinking what would seem infected with death.
MAXIMS FOR VISITORS.
The Roman church, always on the alert to point morals and preach sermons, has filled the Catacombs at convenient intervals with inscriptions designed to be impressive. Some of these are,—
“Happy is he whose hour of death is ever before his eyes!”
“Be not proud or boastful, O mortal; for this is the end of the loftiest ambition and the highest glory!”
“Death recognizes not rank—in his eyes the prince and the peasant are the same!”
“Come, all ye busy worldlings into this silent retreat, and listen to the solemn voice that rises from the tomb!”
“Remember, O man, the mercies of thy God, and remember He will call thee when thou least expectest to hear His voice!”
“The grave is dark; but the paths that lead from it are, to the righteous, strewn with eternal flowers!”
“Mock not the lowly, for in the courts of Heaven the lowly may stand before thee, shorn of thy worldly pride!”
No doubt there is a great deal of truth in these maxims; but in spite of them, and many more like them, death has never been rendered very attractive to persons enjoying good health and a fair degree of prosperity. Death bears about the same relation to life that the Catacombs do to Paris; and I have never yet known any man or woman who would willingly quit the gay Boulevards or the delightful Champs Elysées to walk in the bone-lined and noisome vaults of the subterranean city.
We passed only through the main avenues of the Catacombs,—there is very little variety in them,—and after spending nearly three hours underground, having supped full of material horrors, we reached another staircase, and once more ascended to the light of day, and the blessed sunshine.I had no idea where we were, and I was somewhat surprised to find that we came out nearly a mile and a half from where we had gone down. The charming capital never, I think, appeared quite so charming as it did on that delicious afternoon when I returned from death and decay to the living and the loving, to the comforts and the joys, of the upper world.
AN ENGLISHMAN’S OPINIONS.
While we were in that vast subterranean graveyard, I was struck by the different effect it produced upon different persons in our party. An Englishman, who was extremely anxious to “do the thing, you know,” was superlatively disgusted after he had passed the vestibule, and declared the Catacombs the “beastliest place” he had ever seen. He grumbled like Vesuvius before eruption, and swore that the French authorities ought to be exposed for permitting the subjects of Her Majesty to thrust themselves into such a “bloody” hole. He even suggested that it was a French trick to get rid of certain true and noble Britons, and, of course, threatened to write to the Times on the subject. He was constantly predicting that the rock overhead would tumble down and bury us all, and really seemed uncomfortable because something horrible did not happen. After he had gone half way through, he wanted to go back, and when he had reached the end of the route, he was much dissatisfied that we hadn’t done a great deal more. He fretted and fumed every minute of the three hours, and did his best to render every one as nervous and discontented as himself.
Several Americans ran all sorts of saws on the Englishman, and prophesied some terrible calamity at every step, saying they never would have thought of coming into the gloomy region unless they had expected that a fair proportion of the excursionists would be killed. Two of my countrymen insisted that they had made their wills before they had left their hotel, and a third averred that he had a vial of prussic acid and a revolver in his pocket for the express purpose of committing suicide, if he should be lost in the cavernous windings. He asked the Briton if he had not taken the sameprecaution, and pronounced him superlatively reckless because he had not, explaining the advantage of self-destruction over a lingering and horrible death. John Bull, remarkable to relate, had not the slightest suspicion that the “Yankees” were poking fun at him. On the contrary, he regarded all their jests as solemnly sincere, and asserted that it was exactly like our nation never to enjoy anything that was not accompanied by a bloody murder of some sort.
A young Italian, who was quite good-looking, and far more conscious of the fact than anybody else, endured martyrdom in the Catacombs from quite another cause. He was very carefully and daintily dressed, and appeared to consider dust or soil upon his clothes as a sovereign evil. He was the dandiest of dandies, and the most fastidious of fools. He looked rather blank, as I had noticed, when we first began the descent of the circular staircase in the Custom House garden. He was in advance, and before we had gone down a dozen steps, I observed a number of large drops falling from the blazing tapers above him upon his new hat and coat. Some kind friend pointed these out to him, and he actually turned pale with wrath and chagrin.
INCONVENIENCES OF A VISIT.
“Who could have done this? Such conduct is disgraceful! I did not come here to have my clothes ruined. I wish the Catacombs were in the bottomless pit.” These and other phrases he ejaculated in choice Tuscan, which very few understood, but which those who did understand enjoyed not a little. After the marring of his wardrobe, there could be no pleasure for him. If he had been shown all the wonders of the world, he could not have forgotten his tarnished garments. His misfortunes followed him. The water dropped through the crevices upon his august person, and as he was unusually tall, he crushed his hat every few minutes against the overhanging rock, which struck oaths out of him as steel strikes fire out of flint. I fancied sometimes that he envied the skeletons he passed, because they had no clothes to spoil. Long before he had finished his underground journey, his beauty of person and raiment was sadly injured, and I amconfident that he will remember the Catacombs, and curse them for the harm they did his garments, till the end of his days.
INQUISITIVENESS OF AN AMERICAN.
A native of Maine entertained us by inquiring constantly of the guide, who could not speak a word of English, while the New Englander had not the least knowledge of French, in regard to the probable cost of the Catacombs, and whether they paid as an investment. He was very desirous to know, also, whose skull this one might be, and whose that, evidently under the impression that all the monarchs and historic characters of France were buried there. Our guide, too polite not to pretend to comprehend the inquisitive fellow, gabbled away in bewildering generalities. The Maine man asseverated again and again, that he would give five dollars to know what the Frenchman said; and therefore I assumed to tell him. I informed him, though the Catacombs had cost five hundred millions of dollars, that they paid a larger interest than any property in the country; that they were owned by the Rothschilds, who received one hundred dollars from the government for every skull put into the vaults; and that, as there were six millions of them, he could calculate the profits. “By thunder!” he replied; “no wonder those old Jews are so rich. I never knew before how they made all their money. I wonder if a chap couldn’t buy a little Catacomb stock.”
That mighty charnel-house is not without its tragic history. A number of persons have been lost there in spite of all the precautions against accidents; but these have been very rare of late, because so few persons could obtain admission.
A few years ago, a newly-married couple arrived in Paris from the provinces, having gone to the city on their bridal tour. It was their first visit to the capital, and they were naturally desirous to see its lions. The bride had heard a great deal of the Catacombs, and would not be satisfied without exploring them, albeit her husband endeavored to dissuade her from such a dismal enterprise. She was bent on going, and so they went together. He kept close to her side, constantly fearing she might be lost. He admitted that hehad a presentiment respecting her, and sure enough it was realized.
AN UNHAPPY HONEYMOON.
They had been in the Catacombs something more than an hour, when, having stopped to examine a curious skull, he called for her to look at it, and discovered, to his horror, that she was missing. There were nearly two hundred in the party, and nobody had observed when or where she had disappeared. They all retraced their steps, entered the adjoining passages, and shouted themselves hoarse to attract her attention; but all in vain. Not the least vestige of her could be discovered. The bridegroom was beside himself with grief, declaring that he knew she would never be found, and calling upon the rocks to fall, and relieve him of his misery. It became necessary to drag him from the sepulchral vault, and when this was done, he proved to be a raving maniac. He was sent to an asylum, where such was the violence of his paroxysms night and day, that he died of exhaustion in less than a fortnight. Diligent search was made for the missing bride, though to no purpose. Not the slightest clew was obtained to her fate, and it was finally conjectured that she must have wandered into some tortuous avenue, and fallen into one of the pits which I have described. Such was the melancholy ending of a honeymoon before it had fairly begun.
Another couple, who had been married a number of years, and who had long lived so inharmoniously that they had gone apart several times, entered the Catacombs in the spring of 1853. The wife was missing when the party came out,—it is always the custom to count the number at the beginning and end of the journey, so as to see that none are lost,—and the husband asserted that he had seen her only a few seconds before. Still, she could not be found on that day or the next; but about a fortnight after, a body answering to her description was discovered in one of the narrow passages into which excursionists are never taken. She had evidently been dead some time, and a deep wound on her temple indicated that she might have perished from violence. Her husband was notfree from suspicion of having murdered her; but as she might have been so injured by a fall, he was never openly accused of the crime. The story was generally circulated, and the anti-matrimonial jesters of the capital insinuated that more than a thousand unhappy husbands immediately applied for permission to make the subterranean tour with their wives, in the hope that they might be as fortunate as the ungrieving widower.
IMPRISONED FOR THREE HOURS.
Walking one day on the Boulevards, my companion pointed out to me a well-dressed man, who had a certain prematurely old look, and whose hair was perfectly white. I was told he was only thirty-five, and that, five years before, he had gone into the Catacombs with a young lady to whom he was engaged, and had hidden himself away from the sepulchral pilgrims for a few minutes, that he might learn how his supposed loss would affect his betrothed. He hid himself so very effectually, that three hours elapsed before he could be found. He had in that time entirely surrendered all hope of release, and the physical changes of years had fallen upon him. He has often described his sensations during those hours, and has represented them as the most terrible he could conceive of. (I can imagine, yes, even understand, what they must have been by my own experience.) The revolution in his mental was as great as the revolution in his physical nature; and after his distressing sensations, all his freshness and buoyancy of feeling departed. With a strange morbidity, he associated the young lady on whom he had wished to try the sentimental experiment with the agony he had endured, and though she was as wretched as any woman ought to be when he was missed, he broke off his engagement, and refused to see her again after that eventful day. The gentleman may be living still; for, in spite of appearances, he had an excellent constitution and vigorous health. He was in good circumstances, and went to dine regularly at theCafé Anglais, where he had told his story so often, that he had received the name of “Catacombes” Beaudinet. Nothing remarkable except that had ever happened to him, and as he was a Frenchman, and fondof prattle, his one adventure filled him, and rendered him a bore of the first water.
A MANIA FOR SUICIDE.
As is well known, the French not only have a passion for suicide, but a passion for committing it at certain places, and in certain ways, that seems to be contagious. Forty years ago, a young journalist, while exploring the Catacombs in company with many of his acquaintances, naturally fell to talking on the subject of death, and expressed his opinion that there was nothing awful in it, or even unwelcome. Some of his friends rallied him on this position, and told him he would think very differently if he were conscious that death was near at hand. He stoutly denied that it would change his sentiments in the least, and when nobody appeared to believe him, he suddenly drew a small knife from his pocket, and before any one was aware of his intention, he thrust it into his heart. His suicide, in such a place too, filled his friends with horror, and the press, as he had been a member of the guild, gave detailed accounts of the tragedy, accompanied by strange theories and analyses of the causes that must have led to it. For several weeks, the Paris journals were full of communications on the subject; and they so aroused public attention and curiosity, that in less than six months nearly twenty men stabbed themselves to death in the Catacombs—all of them unquestionably the effect of example.
The Catacombs are the reverse side of the fair picture of Paris. Never since my journey through them have I been able to forget that they lie black and yawning under some of the most beautiful quarters of the capital. When the sunshine is brightest along the Seine, I think of the darkness below. When the city smiles fairest, I recall the millions of grinning skeletons underneath. When the music from the gardens, and the concerts, and the operas sounds sweetest, I fancy mingling among the strains a mournful dirge for the departed and forgotten, so confusedly heaped together in the awful dreariness of the Catacombs.